How can we evaluate people’s level of consciousness without becoming judgmental?

Transcript

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So if you say that there are different levels of consciousness can we evaluate this without attaching any value judgment to it. There are two things there is judgment and there is value judgment. So judgment will not necessarily be we can we can make judgments without being judgmental that means say somebody has somebody has a high body temperature that is just an objective fact.
Somebody that means they have fewer. Now to say that your body temperature is high that is a judgment but that is not a value judgment. We are not casting aspersions on the character or the value of that person.
We are just recognizing that there is okay your physical body it has got some disease in it. So broadly speaking you know when we start when we start evaluating or we start judging one of the fundamental advantages of the spiritual world view is that if we understand that we are souls then we can separate the person from their present behavior from their present level of consciousness from their present conduct. So we understand that at our core every one of us is pure every one of us is spiritual every one of us has a spark of the divine at the same time all of us are covered over by different kinds of coverings and based on these different coverings we need to deal with them appropriately.
So for example the yoga tradition is very inclusive and the souls are present not just in human beings souls like us are present in all species so in cats, dogs, lions, tigers, birds, they also have souls within them they are also essentially souls so the words from Bhagavad Gita says that the wise people see all kinds of human beings and all kinds of animals also equally because they see the soul within everyone. At the same time while we see the soul within everyone equally but at the same time we understand that there are different levels right now. So for example there is a soul in a cat and there is a soul in a tiger.
Now if a cat is annoying me and I clap, the cat will go away. If a tiger is annoying me and I clap, I will go away. So there can be equality in disposition but there doesn’t have to be necessarily equality in action.
Now the way I deal with a cat and the way I deal with a lion will be different. So same way we when we look at the people around us we have to understand that different people are at different levels. So some people may be short tempered, some people may be very sentimental, some people may be very nervous, they get worried very quickly, some people may be go getter kind of people, they just when they decide to do something they just push everyone else aside and they may trample on others, just push others and just move towards their goals, some people may be more melancholy, they just live in their own world, they may not respond so quickly to others, so this is just their nature.
So now to observe this and understand this is something which we need to do to interact effectively with them, now whether there is a value judgment associated with it, not necessarily, as souls we understand everyone is pure, but at a present level different people may be acting differently and rather than making objective statement about where they are at, we can focus on how they are going to affect me, if say somebody is aggressive, somebody is by nature they are verbally or physically aggressive, then they may hurt me physically or verbally, so then I may have to keep a distance from them, so this observation involves some evaluation, but that is more not based on we putting ourselves at a level of a judge and looking at others, but rather we put ourselves at a equal level and see you know what is going to be harmful to me, what is going to be beneficial to me, so recognizing different levels of consciousness helps us to firstly protect our consciousness, say if somebody is got into some unhealthy habits, somebody is got into some addictions, taking some drugs or something like that, I don’t want to get into that, if I associate with that person freely, then that person may push me, persuade me and I may also get into that, now I may not judge that person as bad, but I need to see that this particular behavior, this particular action is not so good for me, so I may keep a distance, so we can separate a person from their behavior, so one vision is to consider that everybody whatever they are doing everything is good, no there are objective things which are bad also, but another is to think that, one is to think that we should make no evaluations and the other is to label the person based on the evaluations, we can have a more balanced approach, where we do recognize that there are certain things which are favorable for our growth, something which are unfavorable for our growth, but we understand that everybody at their core is pure, but their present way of functioning may be unhelpful for me, so I may keep a distance from them, so by separating the present level of the person from their spiritual core, we can evaluate without becoming judgmental, any other