Theos-Talk Archives (March 1995 Message tl00405)

Thanks to Liesel and Ann for enlightening comments on the theme
of Theosophists by definition being non-judgmental.  Yes,
developing compassion works against the judgmental reflex, as
does seeing beyond our own set of rules.  Both of these, as
well as recent comments by Jerry S., may tie into the Jungian
distinction between judgment and perception.

The perceptual functions of sensation and intuition are ways we
experience reality; the judgment functions of thinking and
feeling are ways we evaluate what we experience.  At one level,
the idea that the very nature of a Theosophist is not to judge
seems meaningless, since we all are constantly thinking and
feeling about what we sense and intuit.

But the fourfold model helps me catch a glimpse of what the
writer might mean, in that our perceptions are terribly limited
and constrained, and yet our judgments tend to be wildly
excessive in relation to them.  We can't see the inside of a
person's body, and thus have no way to know how their physical
condition might be related to their behavior.  We can't see
their past lives, and know what karmic burden they are under.
We can't see their future, so we can't know how what they are
doing is leading towards it.  What we can perceive of others is
just a tiny cross-section in space and time of a vast process
of individuation.

Yet, even though we know how limited our perceptions are, when
we get into high gear with our thinking and feeling, we
forget.  We are so carried away by our thoughts and feelings in
response to what the person did or said, that we become
inflated with the idea that we are fully qualified to judge
them.  And when the data are missing, we just start making up
facts that fit with our judgments.  (I recently exemplified
this with Bazzer/ULT somewhat).

Maybe the thing that has been most difficult about responses to
my book is when people just invent facts to fit their judgments.
For example, a letter to the Times Book Review complained that
the book, like many others "has gleefully bludgeoned the
reputation of this woman [HPB]...invents new ones
[canards]..[reviewers and authors] take the same smirking
tone...The idea that she had genuine psychic powers or that she
had received instruction from unseen masters is apparently
intolerable to these writers." It's very hard to imagine anyone
PERCEIVING gleeful bludgeoning of HPB's reputation, or a smirking
tone, or intolerance for the idea of her psychic powers or
relations with Masters, in the book, because they are NOT THERE.
But perhaps the letter writer just got into a judgmental mood,
reactive to EVERY book about HPB he didn't like, and in that mood
felt fully qualified to condemn any particular example unread.
People do that stuff all the time.  More seriously, people can
read something and see motives and attitudes that are simply not
there, because they have programmed themselves to find what
"proves" their attitude right.

The trick about responding to this is to avoid judging back in
retaliation.  You have to realize that you know nothing at all
about the person, or his motives, or background, or karma, and
therefore you can only perceive what is immediately present, and
say "I don't understand, therefore I cannot judge."