Question: If somebody is angry with you, what should your reaction to the person be?

Sri Chinmoy: There are a few ways to solve this problem. Anger is undoubtedly a negative power, a destructive power. When that negative power attacks you, you can resort to an infinitely superior power. That power is the Supreme’s Compassion. When anger has come and attacked you, at that time if you invoke the Compassion of the Supreme, which is infinitely more powerful than human anger, then you will be able to inundate the other person with the Supreme’s Compassion. Even if he hurls all his anger-arrows at you, if you can invoke the Supreme’s Compassion, then these arrows will not be able to hurt you. On the contrary, these arrows will eventually illumine you. This is the best approach, the divine approach, for only this approach will bring abiding satisfaction. But if you cannot go to the Highest and get the highest power, then you have to take the second-best course, the human approach.

Just remain indifferent. Your power of indifference is extremely powerful. You have no idea to what extent indifference-power can solve your problems. With your indifference-power you can create a solid, adamantine wall that nothing can approach. If you remain indifferent, then between you and the other person there will be a wall, a solid wall, which his anger will not be able to pass through. If somebody is angry with you and wants to destroy you, just feel that you don’t belong to him and he does not belong to you. Feel that there are two worlds and your world is totally different from his. When you are indifferent, automatically you create another world inside you. So you remain in your indifference-world and let him remain in his anger-world.

But if you take this approach, the human approach, and use your indifference-power, you have to know that you won’t be able to remain indifferent for a long time. Your own aggressive power will come forward: “If he can strike me, then I can also strike him: tit for tat.” But in the spiritual life it is not like that. If somebody attacks you, your attitude will be different. He will attack you to destroy you, but you will only touch him in order to transform him. So your view is totally different from his. He is trying to devour you; but you will only touch him, for if you don’t touch him, how are you going to transform him? If the potter does not touch the clay, then he cannot give shape to any pots. If someone is angry, he will catch hold of all the pots and smash them, break them to pieces. But the potter will only touch them and give them shape. When you have superior power, you will touch the earth-consciousness in order to change it, transform it, illumine it.

We are all seekers of the infinite Truth and Light. If unaspiring persons attack us, they will attack us according to their capacity, according to their understanding, according to their realisation. But our understanding is far superior to theirs, so we have to illumine them. If we do that, then their vital will feel that it is the worst possible punishment that we have given. Their soul will immediately be grateful, but their vital, their unaspiring or aggressive vital, will feel that it has received a most powerful punishment.