Anything that can disturb you, anything that will not allow you to listen, is prejudice. If you come here as a Hindu you will not listen to me, you will hear, because constantly you will be judging, criticizing, evaluating, comparing. If you come here as a Mohammedan, as a Christian, as a communist, as a Catholic, you will not listen. You WILL hear, but you will be constantly engaged in inner work; you will not be available. Prejudice keeps one closed.

And when you are prejudiced, when you have already decided something a priori, then you will listen only in a very choosing way. You will listen only to that which goes to support your prejudice. You will not be able to listen to that which goes against your prejudice.

And that’s how people hear, and that’s how people see. Even seeing is prejudiced. You see only that which you want to see, and you hear only that which you want to hear. And then you go on interpreting according to your prejudice. If you don’t come out of your prejudice, you will never come into the light. Your prejudice is your prison.

And there are prejudices and prejudices… social, political, religious, philosophical, layers and layers of prejudice. And you are surrounded by so many layers that it is almost impossible to reach you. You will have to drop these prejudices.

And Pythagoras is not saying, “Whatsoever I say, you have to believe in it.” No. He is simply saying, “Listen!” There is no question of believing or not believing. And that’s what I am saying to you. It is not a question of believing in whatsoever is said to you — or disbelieving. Truth NEEDS nothing. Truth needs only to be listened to. Once you have listened to it, it will become your truth. And you will not need to believe in it. You have to believe in things only when you have not known them yourself, when you have not known them on your own, when they are not your own experience — then you have to believe.

The person who is ready to listen will not need to believe in anything or disbelieve. His clarity will immediately settle things. When you listen with open ears and open eyes, with clarity and transparency, truth is immediately understood as true, and falsehood is immediately understood as false. You need not think about them; you need not ponder what is right and what is wrong.

In a transparent mind, right is known as right, and wrong is known as wrong. The transparent mind is the decisive factor — it immediately concludes. And the conclusion is not a logical process either.

But we go on carrying prejudices. And small prejudices can prevent. Just a small particle of dust in your eye is enough to prevent you seeing this beautiful world. You will not be able to open your eyes. You may be seeing the Himalayas and a dust particle goes into your eyes — and the Himalayas disappear. Now, the particle of dust is so small, yet it helps the big, immense Himalayas to disappear.

And your eyes are not only full of dust, they are full of mountains of prejudices.

The first thing for a disciple is to be utterly nude as far as prejudices are concerned. Drop them. You have not experienced; you have been told what to believe and what not to believe. Drop everything, become just a pure mirror, and listen.

LISTEN, AND IN THINE HEART ENGRAVE MY WORDS; KEEP CLOSED BOTH EYE AND EAR GAINST PREJUDICE; OF OTHERS THE EXAMPLE FEAR, THINK FOR THYSELF.

AND LOOK AT OTHERS AND SEE: they are all full of conclusions, prejudices, scriptures, philosophies, dogmas and creeds — and yet where have they arrived? Look at them, and fear, be afraid that if you don’t drop your prejudices you will remain the same.

Go outside and look at people — their lives have no joy. their lives have no authenticity, and they are all great believers. Somebody goes to the mosque, somebody goes to the church, somebody to the temple — and they are all religious people. Somebody reads the Bible and somebody reads DAS KAPITAL and somebody reads the Gita — they are all believers! Somebody believes in Kaaba and somebody in Kashi and somebody in the Kremlin, but they are ALL believers. But what has happened in their lives? God has not nodded yet. Their lives are not numinous — God has not yet said yes to them. They know nothing of God.

You can look into their eyes and you will find only sadness and nothing else — frustration writ large. Watch their lives and you will see they are dragging; there is no dance to their steps. Look at what they talk about and you will not find any music in it. Watch their lives and you will not find any grace there. Beware! Are you going to be like this crowd that surrounds the world? Are you going to be just part of the herd? Or are you going to become numinous? That has to be decided by you.

OF OTHERS THE EXAMPLE FEAR…

Pythagoras is absolutely right. Watch others and that will help you. Watch your parents — where have they arrived. And they are guiding you, blind people guiding other blind people. Watch your leaders — where have they arrived. Mad people leading other mad people! Watch your priests — what is their experience?

Look into their eyes, encounter them, and you will find them as afraid as you are, as dark as you are. You will not find even a ray of light in their being. Your rabbis, your pundits, your priests — just go and see.

Be a little more alert in watching people, and immediately this understanding will happen to you: “Am I going to be like this? Like these people? Then life has been lost.” And if you can learn anything from the crowd around you — from your parents, from your friends, from your neighbours — one thing is certain: that the way to truth never goes through prejudices, and the way to God is not the way of the scripture and belief. The way of God goes through silence, purity of the mind, clarity of the mind. And the unprejudiced mind is a pure mind, remember.

By ‘purity’ I don’t mean anything moral; by ‘purity’ I simply mean something scientific. When you say, “This water is pure,” do you mean this is moral? this water is moral? When you say, “This water is pure,” the word ‘pure’ is not used in any moralistic sense. It simply says: this water contains nothing foreign in it. It is .simply itself, clear, no dust, no pollution. It is simply itself. natural; as it should be it is.

I call a mind pure if it has no prejudices — then there is clarity and the mind is functioning like a mirror, a pure mirror.

The moralist’s mind is never pure, because he has a prejudice — what is good and what is bad. He is trying to be good and he is trying not to be bad. And he is against the bad, and he does not know what is bad — because he does not know what is good: he has only been told. He is simply following others: he is part of a long chain of slavery.

If you are born in a Jaina family, then to eat potatoes is wrong. Potatoes? Poor potatoes? They are such innocent people — can you find more innocent people than potatoes? But it is wrong. Anything that grows underneath the earth Jainas avoid; that is immoral. You may never have thought about it; but if you had been born a Jaina, then this would have been your prejudice.

Just watch your prejudices. They are ALL alike — unless something is rooted in your own experience it remains a bondage.

— OSHO [Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2 | Chapter 1 – The Golden Mean]

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