Anything that does not involve mass killing, let’s say genocide, should not be termed as evil. If there is a threat to ‘existence of mass population’, that’s a different thing altogether. Someone has committed an egregious crime by killing people just indiscriminately, without any sense, of course, is an evil act. But apart from that if you think that psychologically something could be evil because someone has defrauded someone in a big way, someone has cheated on a faithful partner, someone has acted on things which has only to do with human psychology, with the human mind, the emotions, that could be termed as an evil act and should be abhorred, deplored? It could be a ‘deplorable’ act. Shall we emphasize much on it? Hem it up? Exaggerate it? Blow it out of proportion? Is it needed? Will it resolve the matter? No way! It will not.

At times it’s very important to be cheated. It is important; in fact, it’s mandatory for greater human beings to be cheated upon, emotionally cheated upon, to be financially defrauded. Anyone who has had ‘achievement of greater dimension’ has gone through ‘series of doubts’ and confusion about different matters in life, including the ones we are talking about here. The evil! What is an evil act? In fact, who knows your evil act has paved the way for someone to achieve ‘greater dimension’ of life, to achieve greater things in life, has helped one to be on the right path which is most suited to him. Without having been cheated upon, he would not or she would not have come on the right path. Who knows? Who knows who is ‘being used’ to do what in life? Therefore, never judge anyone. Never judge a book just by the very cover of it. Never judge a person just by looking at the very peripheral reality of it. Absolutely not!

What do you think—what was done to Lord Rāma, Bhagavāna Rāma, was justified by any stretch of the imagination? What about the Mātā Kaikaī?

Right before he was about to become a king, an emperor, this tragedy happened, and he was dethroned. Before he was throned, he was dethroned, and he went into exile. What about that? Now would you say that the act of Kaikaī Maa was an evil act? The act—would you say that? Is it appropriate to say so? You could say so; yes, that’s right. It was absolutely wrong of her having done so! But what if the king Rāma, the Rājā Rāma, the putative king, had not gone to exile?

Maybe he would not have been the Lord Rāma! The king Rāma, the putative king of Ayodhyā. The kingdom would have been lost that the king had been entitled to be the king of. To be the king without the kingdom is a lost business. And it only matters to those who understand these intricate matters because he would not have been Lord—he would not have become the Bhagavāna—if he hadn’t traversed through the forest, through many different mountains and jungles.

So an evil act is not an evil act. What you think is ‘an evil’ could be exactly what is needed for someone else. An evil act could be exactly what one requires at that point in time that becomes the navigation, that becomes the compass to his life direction.

So anything that happens on a very periphery of it cannot be termed as an evil act. You never know who is being used to do what. It is just like that. If you are watching a movie, would you consider an actor playing the role of a gangster as an evil person? Would you do that? Maybe, apart from the camera, he’s ‘amazing’ human being. In the same way, what is happening around you, it’s just a display of different connotations which you are ‘perceiving’ as the person whom you are becoming. As simple as that!

So the other person’s evil act could turn out to be an absolute opportunity for me to achieve greater success in life. Isn’t it ‘truth’? Someone loses it, and that becomes an opportunity for someone else.

So anything that you see around you has a number of ways to look at it. It cannot be defined with one lens. If one lens is defined, then the book is created; a dogma is created out of it, a theory is populated which deviates the very potential of what man could be ever capable of. If a man wants to discover himself, if a human being wants to reach the Zenith of what he or she is capable of, the only thing that is to be understood is the dimensions of everything and anything which could have more than multiple ways of transmuting itself into everything and anything. It may sound very ‘confounding’ to you, but this is ‘truth’. Anything can be turned into anything, and everything can be turned into anything. And that’s what ‘the physics’ also says. All the physicists of this world have come up with this concept that anything in this universe cannot be looked at as one diagram; it’s not possible; it has infinite possibility of understanding if you look at it closely.

So the whole idea of vindicating someone of all the sins that the person has committed is just a figment of imagination, isn’t it? What crime are you talking about? Yeah, if it has slaughtered human beings, it has killed human beings, it has slaughtered the very idea of humanity by act of someone, if it is that egregious, if it is that deplorable, that’s a different thing altogether. But when it happens only with the cheatings and something only to do with the emotions of a human being, that is a different thing altogether. The reason why people are not so successful in their lives ‘because they have turned what could have been a possibility’—as a tragedy. This is the reality. What came to change their lives, they took it so negatively, they could not accept what happened to them, and they made a hash of it. They could not understand what it was meant for. Only if they had understood, if they had gone within themselves and understood the reason why it happened the way it did, if only they had got bit deeper into understanding of it to know the reason why it did happen and could have looked at things from a different vantage point of view, it would have been different result altogether. Who knows it was an absolute opportunity for them to shed off their illusions of many kinds which they have been carrying with themselves and a ‘baggage’. They don’t want to shed off their baggage. They want to still trudge along with that heavy baggage of Illusion. Who knows something happened just to help them get rid of those multiple baggage of illusions.

So what could have been ‘opportunity’ was ‘turned into a tragedy’ of life. But there are few enlightened ones; there are few awakened ones. Things happen in exactly ‘same way’. There is no difference in the happenings of life, but they turn inward, and they internalize everything and come to a point of view which changes the course of their lives for millions of people to get inspiration from.

So all that is happening, whatever it is, it is just a figment of imagination. It’s just a ‘one lens’ of looking at it. This one lens of looking at it will miss the whole point, will miss the real essence of life.

So all that you see in an evil or whatever it is, is far away from the truth. The truth is what we are making out of what is happening to us. That’s the only thing. There is no Pāpa or Puṇya concept as such, so to speak, unless again, if it is about killing humanity or killing the very essence of humanity. Apart from that, if it is only related to the psychological or the emotional part of human beings, then I think nothing is bad. Everything is how you are narrating it. That is it. And all, it is all about how you’re processing what has happened to you. If you are not attuned to your higher self, you’re not attuned into the subtle matters, then each incident in your life will create upheaval in your life; anything outside of you can create hell lot of upheavals, massive downturn in your life. But if you’re a bit attuned to the subtleties and the intricacies of these happenings, you will have a different point of view that could be good enough to look at things from a brighter perspective because ‘all there is’ is to help us become a better version of ourselves. All there is out there which disquietens us is to help us get rid of all these ‘baggages’ which are superfluous in nature, not needed any longer. That needs to be shed off anyway.

So these opportunities are being given to you in different forms. The forms are very nasty by the look of it. But it has a message, a profound message, which is there to change you, evolve you, to achieve your greatest potential.