Yoga Sutra 10 Criticism, Condemnation

THE MIND BECOMES TRANQUIL BY CULTIVATING ATTITUDES OF FRIENDLINESS TOWARDS THE HAPPY, COMPASSION TOWARDS THE MISERABLE, JOY TOWARDS THE VIRTUOUS…

Look! Patanjali is making steps – and beautiful and very subtle, but exactly scientific.

… JOY TOWARDS THE VIRTUOUS, AND INDIFFERENCE TOWARDS THE EVIL.

When you feel somebody is a virtuous man, joy, the ordinary attitude is that he must be deceiving. How can anybody be more virtuous than you? Hence so much criticism goes on.

Whenever there is somebody who is virtuous, you immediately start criticizing, you start finding faults with him. Somehow or other you have to bring him down. He cannot be virtuous. You cannot believe this. Patanjali says joy, because if you criticize a virtuous man, deep down you are criticizing virtue. If you criticize a virtuous man, you are coming to a point to believe that virtue is impossible in this world. Then you will feel at ease. Then you can move on your evil ways easily because, “Nobody is virtuous; everybody is just like me – even worse than me.” That’s why so much condemnation goes on – criticism, condemnation.

If somebody says, “That person is a very beautiful person,” you immediately find something to criticize. You cannot tolerate – because if somebody is virtuous and you are not, your ego is shattered, and then you start feeling that, “I have to change myself,” which is an arduous effort. The simple is to condemn; the simple is to criticize; the simple is to say, “No! Prove! What are you saying? First, prove how he is virtuous!” And it is difficult to prove virtue; it is very easy to un-prove anything. It is very difficult to prove!

One of the greatest Russian storytellers is Turgenev. He has written a story. The story is that in a small village a man was thought to be stupid, and he was. And the whole town laughed at him. He was just like a fool, and everybody in the town enjoyed his foolishness. But he was tired of his foolishness, so he asked a wise man, “What to do?”

The wise man said, “Nothing! Simply, whenever somebody is praising somebody, you condemn. Somebody is saying that ‘That man is a saint,’ immediately say, ‘No! I know well he is a sinner!’ Somebody says, ‘This book is very great,’ immediately say, ‘I have read it and studied it.’ Don’t bother whether you have read it or not; simply say, ‘This is rubbish.’ If somebody is saying, ‘This painting is one of the greatest works of art,’ simply say, ‘But what is it? – just a canvas and colors. A child can do it!’ Criticize, say no, ask for proofs, and after seven days come to me.”

Within seven days the town started feeling that this man is a genius: “We never knew about his talents, and he is a genius about everything. You show him a painting and he shows the faults. You show him a great book, and he shows the faults. He is such a great critical mind! An analyst! A genius!”

Seventh day he came to the wise man and he said, “Now there is no need to take any advice from you. You are a fool!” The whole town used to believe in that sage, and they all said that “Our genius has said that he is a fool, he must be.”

People always believe in the negative easily because to disprove a no is very difficult – how can you prove? How can you prove that Jesus is the son of God? How will you prove? Two thousand years, and Christian theology has been proving without proving it. But within seconds it was proved that he was a sinner, a vagabond, and they killed – within seconds! Somebody said that “I have seen this man coming out of a prostitute’s house” – finished! Nobody bothers whether this man who is saying that “I have seen,” is believable or not – nobody bothers! The negative is always believed easily because it is also helping your ego. The positive is not believed.

You can say no whenever there is virtue. But you are not harming the virtuous man: you are harming you. You are self-destructive. You are, in fact, committing suicide slowly – poisoning yourself. When you say that “This man is not virtuous, that man is not virtuous,” what are you, in fact, creating? You are creating a milieu in which you will come to believe that virtue is impossible; and when virtue is impossible, there is no need to attempt. Then you fall down. Then you settle wherever you are. Growth becomes impossible. And you would like to settle, but then you settle in misery because you are miserable.

You all have settled completely. This settlement has to be broken; you have to be unsettled. Wherever you are you have to be uprooted and replanted in a higher plane, and that is possible only if you are joyful towards the virtuous.

… JOY TOWARDS THE VIRTUOUS AND INDIFFERENCE TOWARDS THE EVIL.

Don’t even condemn evil.

The temptation is there; you would like to condemn even virtue. And Patanjali says don’t condemn evil. Why? He knows the inner dynamics of the mind: because if you too much condemn evil, you pay too much attention to evil, and by and by, you become attuned to it. If you say that, “This is wrong, that is wrong,” you are paying too much attention to the wrong. You will become addicted, with the wrong. If you pay too much attention to anything, you become hypnotized. And whatsoever you are condemning you will commit, because it will become an attraction, a deep-down attraction. Otherwise, why bother? They are sinners, but who are you to bother about them?

Jesus says, “Judge ye not…” That’s what Patanjali means – indifference; don’t judge this way or that – be indifferent. Don’t say yes or no; don’t condemn, don’t appreciate. Simply leave it to the divine; it is none of your business. A man is a thief: it is his business. It is his and God’s. Let them settle themselves; you don’t come in. Who is asking you to come in? Jesus says, “Judge ye not…” Patanjali says, “Be indifferent.”

One of the greatest. hypnotists of the world, Emile Coue, discovered a law – law of hypnosis. He called it the Law of Reverse Effect. If you are too much against something, you will become a victim. See a new person learning a bicycle on the road. The road is sixty feet wide, and there is a milestone by the side of the road. Even if you are a perfect cyclist and you make the target of the stone that, “I will go and crash with the stone,” sometimes you may miss. But never the new learner – never! He never misses the cornerstone. In a subtle way, his cycle moves towards the stone, and sixty feet wide is the road! Even with blindfolded eyes you can move on it – even if there is nobody on the road, it is completely silent, nobody is moving…

What happens to this new learner? A law is working. Emile Coue calls it the Law of the Reverse Effect. Immediately, because he is a learner, he is afraid, so he looks around, where is the fear point – where he can go wrong? The whole road is okay, but this stone, this red stone by the corner, that is the danger: “I may crash with it.” Now there is an affinity created. Now his attention is towards the stone; the whole road is forgotten. And he is a learner! His hands tremble, and he is looking at the stone, and by and by he feels that the cycle is moving. Once he feels the cycle…

The cycle has to follow your attention: cycle has no will of its own. It follows you wherever you are going, and you follow your eyes, and eyes follow a subtle hypnosis, an attentiveness. You are looking at the stone, the hands move that way. You become more and more afraid. The more you are afraid, the more caught, because now the stone seems to be an evil force, as if the stone is attracting you. The whole road is forgotten, the cycle is forgotten, the learner is forgotten. Only the stone is there; you are hypnotized. You will go and crash with the stone. Now you have fulfilled your mind; next time you will be more afraid. Now where to break out of it?

When you say that something is wrong, go in the monasteries – the monks condemning sex. Sex has become the milestone. Twenty-four hours they are thinking about it: trying to avoid it is thinking about it. The more you try to avoid it, the more you are hypnotized. That is why in the old scriptures it is said whenever a saint concentrates, beautiful girls from heaven come and try to disturb his mind. Why should beautiful girls be interested? Somebody is sitting under a tree with closed eyes, why will beautiful girls be interested in this man?

Nobody comes from anywhere, but he is so much against sex it becomes a hypnosis. He is so much; hypnotized that now dreams become real. He opens the eyes and sees a beautiful naked girl standing there. You need a pornographic book to see a nude woman. If you go to the monastery you will not need a pornographic book: you create your pornography yourself all around. And then the seer, the man who was concentrating, becomes more afraid: he closes his eyes, clenches his fist. Now inside the woman is standing.

And you cannot find such beautiful women on this earth because they are creations of dreams – hypnosis byproducts – and the more he becomes afraid, the more they are there. They will rub with his body, they will touch his head, they will cling and embrace him. He is completely mad, but this happens. This is happening to you also. Degrees may differ, but this is what is happening. Whatsoever you are against, you will be joined with it deep down.

Never be against anything. To be against evil is to fall a victim. Then you are falling into the hands of evil. Indifference: if you follow indifference, it means it is none of your concern. Somebody is stealing: that is his karma. He will know and he will have to suffer. That is not your business at all: you don’t think about it, don’t pay any attention to it. There is a prostitute: she is selling her body – that is her business. You don’t have condemnation in you, otherwise you will be attracted towards her.

It happened – a very old story – that a saint and a prostitute lived together. They were neighbors, and then they died. The saint was very famous. Death came and started trying to take the saint to hell. And they died on the Fame day, the prostitute also.

The saint was surprised because the prostitute was taken on the road towards heaven. So he said, “What is this? There seems to be some misunderstanding. I am the one who should be led towards heaven. And this is a prostitute!”

Death said, “We know, but now if you want, we can explain to you: there is no misunderstanding. There are the orders – that the prostitute has to be brought to heaven and the saint has to be thrown into hell.” The saint said, “But why?” Even the prostitute could not believe it. She said, “Something must be wrong. I must be thrown in heaven? And he is a saint – a great saint. We worshipped him. Take him to heaven.”

Death said, “No, that’s not possible, because he was a saint just on the surface, and he was thinking continuously of you. And when you; will sing in the night, he will come and listen to you. He will stand just near the fence and listen to you. And millions of times he would like to go to see you, love you; millions of times he dreamed of you. He was continuously thinking about you. On the lips was the name of God; in the heart was the image of you.”

And the same from the opposite direction was true with the prostitute. She was selling her body, but always thinking that she would like to have a life like this saint who lives in a temple. “How pure he is!” She dreamt about the saint, the purity, the saintliness, the virtue that she is missing. And when customers would have gone, she would pray to God that “Next time don’t make me a prostitute again. Make me a worshipper; make me a meditator. I would like to serve in the temple.”

And many times she thought to go into the temple, but thinking that she is so much in sin, it was not good to enter the temple: “The place is so holy and I am such a sinner.” And many times she wanted to touch the feet of the saint, but thinking that that would not be good: “I am not worthy enough to touch his feet.” So when the saint will pass, she will just collect the dust on the road from where the saint has passed, and she will worship that dust.

What you are outwardly is not the question. What is your inner hypnosis will decide your future course of life. Be indifferent to evil. Indifference does not mean apathy – remember. These are subtle distinctions. Indifference doesn’t mean apathy It does not mean that close your eyes, because even if you close you have taken a standpoint, attitude. It does not mean don’t bother, because there also is a subtle condemnation. Indifference simply means as if it doesn’t exist, as if it is not there. No attitude indifference means. You pass as if it is not happening.

Upeksha, the word Patanjali uses, is very beautiful. It is neither apathy nor antagonism nor escape. It is simple indifference without any attitude – remember, without any attitude, because you can be indifferent with an attitude. You can think it is not worth it – it is not worthy of me to think about it. No, then you have an attitude, and a subtle condemnation is hidden in it. Indifference means simply, “Who are you to decide, to judge?” You think about you, “Who are you? How can you say what is evil and what is good? Who knows?”

Because life is such a complexity the evil becomes good, the good becomes evil – they change. Sinners have been known to reach the ultimate; saints have been known to be thrown into hell. So who knows? And who are you? Who is asking you? You take care of yourself. Even if you can do that, enough you have done. You are more mindful and aware; then an indifference comes to you without any attitude.