Paul Brunton on the topic of evil:

Do not surrender to powers that are evil
Like all true sages the Buddha recognized that there was no universal code of morality and that there were gradations in duty, stages in ethics. Hence when General Simha came to question him about this very point, torn by doubt whether he should give up his profession of soldiering or continue in it, the Buddha replied: "He who deserves punishment must be punished. Whosoever must be punished for the crimes he has committed suffers his injury not through the ill-will of the judge but on account of his evildoing. The Buddha does not teach that those who go to war in a righteous cause after having exhausted all means to preserve the peace are blameworthy. He must be blamed who is the cause of the war. The Buddha teaches a complete surrender of self but he does not teach a surrender of anything to those powers that are evil.
    These words are quoted only because they express exactly the viewpoint of the hidden teaching upon the same question. It is not denied that the correct attitude for monk or mystic is to take no life under any circumstances, but rather to suffer his own, martyr-like, to be taken away instead; and to cause no hurt to any other person even inpunishment. Gandhi, therefore, with his doctrine of non-violence, represents Indian mysticism at its best; but it would be a gross mistake to take him as a representative of the far higher Indian philosophy. The latter does not teach an ethic of emotional unrealism but an ethic of reasoned service. It is stong where the other is sentimental.
    The famous injunction of Jesus to resist not evil must also be interpreted in the same light. It is to be followed literally and externally by mystics and renunciants but intelligently and internally by the wise. For although the latter have come to know their ultimate oneness with the crook and criminal, this need not prevent them from protecting themselves or others against crookedness and criminality or from punishing wrongdoers for their malpractices, provided, as Buddha further pointed out, this is done without hatred. For then, observed the great Asiatic teacher, "the criminal should learn to consider that this punishment is the fruit of his own act, and as soon as he can honestly arrive at such understanding the punishment will purify his soul and he may no longer lament his fate but actually rejoice in it".
    A mysticism which makes a man into a passive spectator of aggresive injustice or violent murder or an asceticism which makes him condone evil done in his presence on the plea that he has renounced the world and its ways does not represent the real wisdom of India. It is the duty of a philosopher not to refuse help when suffering victims cry out against attack, but to bestow it, using force if necessary. A doctrine that preaches lethargic inertia or flabby non-violence in the face of acts of flagrant violation of justice and goodwill is completely unacceptable to philosophy. Such misunderstanding of the old sages and such weakness of heart and mind have never helped India but merely degraded her. The mystic who is afraid of administering punishment because he is afraid of causing suffering is guided by emotion. The philosopher who is not afraid to do so when necessary knows that suffering is the greatest teacher of man; for what man will not learn by reason he must learn by pain. He who will not think must suffer. What he might learn in a few minutes through reflection will be whipped into him during a few years through pain. Many a blow falls on the head of a man just to get a single idea into it. He must learn by personal anguish what he has refused to learn by personal reflection. He must understand by bitter pain what he would not understand by the persuasions of philosophy. For the mystic wishes to be undisturbed and to disturb none, whereas the philosopher wishes to be altruistic and to serve all.

— The Hidden Teaching Beyond Yoga, Epilogue: "The Philosophic Life"
     Rider & Company, London, 1941, pp. 339-340

Conceptions of what constitues evil
Not that we need war to shrive our spirits and purge our hearts; life with its changing panorama of thought and deed, its endless personal struggles, is always assisting us likewise. But often war is the visible climax of graded periods of the cosmic struggle between the selfless and selfish tendencies in man's outlook, between whatever works towards unity and whatever works towards disintegration. Meanwhile humanity will rise to higher and higher conceptions of what constitutes evil, dropping its narrower outlooks and ancient brutalities with deepening shame. The horrors of bloody war will disappear and soldiers will throw aside their steel helmets when the beast in man is tamed, but the conflict of minds will replace it. Struggle must continue while the world lasts, but it will gradually be refined, modified, dignified and purged of its physical brutality. We must therefore admit with Socrates: "Evil, O Glaucon, will not vanish from the earth. How should it, if it is the name of the imperfection through whose defeat the perfect types acquire their value?" and with Buddha: "Struggle there must be, for all life is a struggle of some kind." But Buddha also pointed out that the conflict in life is not really between good and evil but between knowledge and ignorance. We must remember that the sages refuse to recognize evil as a positive independent existence but only as a limited and transient aspect of existence. Our task is to learn wisdom from all experience, from pain as from pleasure, from cruelty as from kindness, and to express in the arena of everyday life just what we have learnt. In this way everything that happens gives us a better foothold for future living.
    Fourth and last of the lessons we may draw is that intelligence, adequately sharpened, courageously accepted and selflessly applied, is always the dominant factor in the end. Those who worship force rather than brains as the highest social power should take a lesson from the calm perspective of history. If force were the greatest thing known the gigantic dinosaur would be king of this world, and the prehistoric monsters would have inherited the earth long ago. Yet how many herds of these animals have gone with the years and left no heirs? They have died out and disappeared. Why? Because there is something greater than mere force. That something is Thought. Man— puny animal that he was in comparison with these giants— conquered them all. He did it not by force, but by brains. There is no limit to what he shall be able to do when he shall have fully harnessed this wondrous power of thought, so little understood though it be. Science is only a stage in this growth. There are those who have become afraid of it because they have become afraid of what scientific war has done to man. But science is only a sword. With it you may pierce through your problems or pierce through your throat. Whatever you do the responsibility lies with yourself, not with the sword. Intelligence blossoms as the flower of well-reasoned thought and it matures gradually into the fruit of spontaneous insight. That which begins in the primitive savage as a glimmer of purely local inquisitiveness ends in the evolved man as a passion for consummate understanding of all existence. The innumerable lives on earth which intervene between both are but lessons in the school of intelligence. When intelligence is only partial, immature and incomplete it teaches man cunning, selfishness and materialism. When full, mature and perfect it teaches him wisdom, selflessness and truth.

— The Hidden Teaching Beyond Yoga, Epilogue: "The Philosophic Life"
     Rider & Company, London, 1941, pp. 348-349