We cannot be envious of somebody and use it for Krsna's service. But still, as Prabhupada is explaining here, completely purified envy exists in the spiritual world. What is the symptom of purified envy? That it is always to increase Krsna's service--without ever any malice. In contrast, when we are envious in the material world, we want to put others down. We want to either do better than others or achieve something better than them, and the way we do it is by diminishing what they are doing.
September 5, 2010, Almaty, Kazakhstan