We have here reached the innermost essence of the law of karma or retribution. We are in an area where almost all uninitiated or unintellectual people judge wrongly and thereby sabotage their own spiritual freedom or clip their will and make their fate a mental prison in which they want everything and everyone encapsulated. Their relationship to their neighbour or their surroundings is thus in reality, without their being conscious of it, the same as that between a prison guard and his prisoner. Indeed, in the very worst cases, it becomes precisely that relationship. The prisoners in this cosmic or mental prison to a very great extent want to break out. "Imprisoned" here is the consciousness or thought-world of the individual. In this thought-world the individual has a whole series of compartments or terrains in which he has placed everything and everyone according to his sympathy and antipathy. And the source of this sympathy or antipathy will thus be the basis for the individual's relationship to his neighbour and his surroundings. It will determine which judgement, which prison cell, which favouritisms or what lack of peace this being will have within his thought-world or area of consciousness.
      So what greatly inconveniences the ordinary terrestrial human being is that he starts by desiring something or making demands on all beings and things with which he comes into contact. As a rule he has created his own image of how beings and things should be. If what he meets or comes into contact with does not correspond to this image, the being in question becomes more or less disappointed. And this disappointment can in turn lead to annoyance, which in turn leads to indignation or anger and thereby to persecution of, or war against, the beings or things concerned. And it is this persecution or war that ultimately sabotages his own happiness, his joy in living. So the misfortune of such a being consists of all those prejudices against beings and things of which he has gradually let his consciousness consist. And the more such prejudiced or fossilized preconceptions about beings and things a being has, the more unpleasing these beings, which means his surroundings and his neighbours, come to appear to him. And towards these neighbours he will be filled with a highly unloving and persecuting criticism, which in turn becomes slander or gossip about the neighbours concerned. It was this "criticism" the world redeemer warned against with his commandment: "Judge not that ye be not judged! For with what judgement ye judge shalt thou be judged, and with what measure you measure shall ye be measured in turn". And surely it is in harmony with this that he said: "... when thou art smitten on the right cheek then turn to him the other also".