Pure observation without judgment

We live in a world where everyone functions as a self-appointed judge of others. And this habit of judging does not end with intimate friends or acquaintances only; we do it with strangers too. We may see a stranger walking on the road who may have nothing to do with anybody, and we look at him and start judging him/her. We project our liking or disliking to him/her — this person is ugly, this person is beautiful... so on and so forth. Just one glance at the person and we have judged the person. The judgment may be right or wrong, it really does not matter. What matters is, we are judging as a habit, nobody has asked us to judge.

It may happen that as a coincidence, we see the same person again next day or next week, we will be quick to judge again, and comparing with our past judgment, some new colours would be added to the past judgment. This person becomes a victim of our solidifying judgment about him/her. We start to have a particular fixed image of this person. Whenever there will be a need to relate with him/her, we will not be able to relate in a fresh manner; we will be relating him/her with all the dust of past images gathered in our eyes. And as a result, this person is not the real person we are meeting now — we are meeting the person of our judgment, own projection and creation. S/he may not be aware of the image we have of her/him.

The question arises: Is it really possible to not judge and see things or persons as they are, without any kind of judgment Yes, it is possible. It is possible if we function moment-to-moment, and let our mind not be burdened with the past memory. Yes, the memory may be there, we cannot wish it away or wash it out, but it should not be allowed to cloud our eyes with its thick screen. Our eyes should function as a clean mirror. A mirror has no prejudice; it reflects things as they are. An enlightened person is one who has such eyes and functions like a mirror. And such a person can proclaim the truth.

Jesus Christ was such an enlightened mystic who said: “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” This is his most significant statement that can transform people into sensitive meditators.

In one of his discourses, Osho illustrates this statement with a Sufi story: “I have heard about one Sufi mystic. He used to sell small things in the village, and people became aware that he had no judgment. So they would take the things and give him fake coins. He would accept them, because he would never say, ‘This is wrong and this is right.’ Sometimes they would take things from him and they would say, ‘We have paid,’ and he would say, “Okay.” He would thank them.”

“Then from other villages also people started coming. This man was very good; you could take anything from his shop, you need not pay, or you could pay in fake coins, and he accepted everything!”

“One day death came near to the old man. These were his last words: he looked at the sky and said, ‘Allah, God, I have been accepting all kinds of coins, fake ones too. I am also a fake coin — don’t judge me. I have not judged your people, please don’t judge me.’”

Osho explains: If judgment disappears, you have become innocent. If you don’t divide things into good and bad, ugly and beautiful, acceptable and non-acceptable, if you don’t divide things, if you look at reality without any division, your eyes will come into existence for the first time. This is chakshusmati vidya, the signs of gaining eyes.

If you divide you will remain blind, if you judge you will remain blind, if you say this is bad and this is good, you will persist in your blindness... because existence knows nothing. There is nothing good or nothing bad — existence accepts everything. And when you also accept everything you have become existence-like.

You have become one with it. So remember, morality is not religion. Rather, on the contrary, morality is one of the hindrances in gaining religion, just like immorality. Morality and immorality — both are hindrances. When you transcend both you have transcended the mind, the dual and dualistic attitude.

The sage and the sinner have become one. Then you remain in your self, you don’t move to judge. And when you don’t judge, your mind cannot project: the mind projects through judgment.

Swami Chaitanya Keerti, editor of Osho World, is the author of Osho Fragrance