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images.exoticindiaart.com If another person's pain evokes your fear, that is pity. If another person's pain evokes your love, that is compassion.
Q: You're always talking about "compassion". What does "compassion" mean? A: Compassion means the direct opposite of dehumanization and devaluation, the direct opposite of belittling, reifying, and demeaning other humans. Compassion means being able to perceive each human being as having full human integrity. Compassion is not about making excuses. Compassion is about being intelligent & skillful in crafting ethical solutions for ethical problems. Compassion overrides our more primitive instincts to divide the world into "us/them" and self/other". Compassion is a symptom of spiritual & philosophical advancement. It is a choice not an instinct. As a result compassion is rare, difficult to achieve, and almost impossible to sustain. However achieving compassion is definitely worth the effort, from a completely selfish point of view. I always recommend working strictly from self interest! Most of us have had the experience of being dehumanized: treated as a number, or as a job description, as outsider race or caste non-human, or as an unwilling financial, emotional, or psychic tool for someone else's gain. We know that being treated as a human garbage can for someone else's ego projection is an exhausting, sickening feeling. Who wouldn't want to avoid being used, abused, hated, and exploited?
Psychic reality conforms to the golden rule. As we give, so shall we receive. Therefore the single best insurance policy against becoming a victim of someone else's ignorant dehumanizing projections is to train oneself to always see other people as fully human. This practice strengthens the aura and prevents other people's matching self-hatred energy from triggering a victim event in one's own life. Compassion is a good insurance policy and it works wonders in human relationships, but compassion is not natural for humans. Dehumanization is unfortunately a much more natural response to threat than is compassion. Compassion is a choice whereas dehumanization is an unconscious instinct. The most basic and primitive part of the human brain, often called the "reptile brain" is programmed to ensure our physical survival "whatever it takes." As Swami Beyondananda used to say, "the reptile brain doesn't solve problems - it attacks them." Our most natural, familiar, and instinctive response to threat is always to "shoot first and ask questions later." The constant flow of unconscious survival signaling that humans receive from their base brain, or reptile brain, is an undeniable reality of human life. "Be compassionate: for compassion is the root of all doctrines." - Tirukkurala, Tura., Ch. 25 Where does compassion come from and what role does it play in survival? Compassion is a relatively "new" development in human consciousness that is related to the "new" parts of our brains that have been added on to our basic reptile brain. These evolutionary additions to the brain stem are not needed for reproductive survival. They are more like "options" or "accessories" that produce all sorts of curious human behaviors which are not directly related to eating and killing competitors. These optional new parts of the brain distinguish humans from their animal counterparts and link the human species at least potentially more closely to the divine. However the optional brain parts really are optional. Most people don't use them very much. Our species has a long way to go before we learn to fully utilize the miraculous powers of the human brain. Nevertheless, in every generation, there are some humans who have burned off enough ignorance karma to be liberated from the most basic survival fears and anxieties. This elite corps typically receives material protection, i.e. they are not raised in terrible survival conditions such as direct war or starvation etc. They typically emerge in stable, learned societies with plenty of food and protection. Under these beneficial circumstances, the elite are safe enough to develop some of the features of the newer parts of their brains. One of the resources in the new brain areas is memory - personal and species. In hospitable environments, the spiritual labors of great minds who preceded us in history can be remembered by reading, receiving oral tradition, meditating to wake up the inner remembrance of one's own previous incarnations - basically, using memory as a way to "pick up where one left off" so that spiritual awareness can continue to advance across the generations. These special few who are privileged to be safe enough to override the reptile brain's constant survival signaling -- and who furthermore receive the education necessary to connect with other privileged humans who are also safe and also educated in the philosophical and religious "memories" of their traditions - these are the bearers and developers of compassion. I believe in compassion. Isn't that enough? So far there are not many people who can feel compassion or even really understand what compassion is good for. Most people quite naturally feel under assault. They perceive scarcity, and scarce resources evoke the survival response of the reptile brain. However, it is possible using the newer parts of the brain to override some of the knee-jerk responses that the anxious, urgent reptile brain rather compulsively sends into the normal every day consciousness. The reasoning parts of the new brains (there are actually several brains interconnected) can make arguments for the opposite conclusion. I.e., a reasonable and educated person in a time of peace and abundance can look around them and say, "Gee, despite feeling tremendously anxious and competitive and laboring under a daily fear of annihilation, I things are actually pretty much OK out there and I will quite likely survive all day tomorrow, if not fully through next week." In other words, the rational brain can "talk the reptile brain down" by "proving" to itself that the survival signals are really not necessary. Most people who suffer from scarcity anxiety - the fear that there just isn't enough, despite abundant reasonable evidence that there is plenty - are doing serious battle with their reptile brains. Normally survival anxiety trumps the reasoning process, because its terror signals are much stronger that the new brains rational arguments. The reptile brain was there first, and its signals have priority. Compassion, which sees each person as a full human equal to the self, versus survival anxiety, which sees each person as a competitor for scarce resources, are pretty much opposites. And as we have seen, the chances of an "argument" for compassion consistently overriding the much more powerful anxiety signals pumped constantly into the field of awareness by a biologically dominant survival brain, is slim indeed. If rational argument rarely sustains compassion, what does work? So far historically, the best method for allaying the constant fear and anxiety of the reptile brain seems to be sitting meditation. For the tiny elite that is even interested in developing compassion - the elite that has been raised in safety, nourished, and educated in the spiritual memory of their tradition - the battle for compassion is fought in the meditation hall. Here, ancient techniques allow anger, fear, stress responses, frustration, and victim memories to rise into consciousness. The reptile brain gets full "air time" - one understands the survival response, acknowledges, and validates it. But then, in a dramatic behavior change made possible by the new brain, one chooses to simply not respond. The rage, fear, terror, impulse to dehumanize one's competitor making it so easy to hurt, oppress or kill them - this is all "set aside". Hmm, says the meditator, "how interesting." S/he at no time suppresses the urgent survival message, always validates the truth of our human programming, but consciously overrides the hormonally driven message to hate, kill, or deny another's divinity. Taking the meditative practice out into the world, the meditator gets some intensive practice with overriding core instincts, putting the new brain to a critical test. Plenty of people "believe in" compassion but can they do it when the survival instincts are raging? Normally, no. Rational arguments for compassion normally fail under pressure, as noted above. However, psychic meditation practice in any of the great religious traditions has a much better track record for strengthening the new brain's power to choose compassion. Meditation practice repeats and repeats and repeats the conscious act of overriding the instinct to dehumanize a person who looks like, sounds like, and smells like a threat to my access to scarce resources. In the real-world test, where mere rational arguments collapse under survival pressure, those who practice meditative overriding much more often succeed. What happens if there really is a threat and reversing the instinct to dehumanize actually gets the meditator killed? First of all, the risk of physical annihilation is generally acceptable to most people who have reached the practice of true compassion. Once high levels of philosophical and psychic awareness have been reached, the person has already discovered their eternal divine identity. As a result, compassionate folks are rarely much attached to their temporary physical identity. But secondly and perhaps more important for us beginners, compassion - the act of overriding human survival instinct to dehumanize others - typically prevents violent attack. "Where the life of people could be saved by telling a lie, there lie would be truth and the truth lie." ~~ Padma Purana (Srishti kanda), 18.392 How can lowering one's instinctive defenses possibly lessen chances of a physical attack? The reason is "matching energy". An attack by one person upon another is a type of relationship. A horrible relationship, but essentially and crucially a relationship. Attacks happens when person A feels angry and scared, and person B responds to A's feeling with their own angry fear. Then the dance begins. However if person B has the skill of true compassionate, B can recognize and validate A's angry survival fear without exciting B's own fight-or-flight response. Compassionate B will sense A's fear but B her/himself will not succumb to fear. Rather, compassionate B remains physically present but psychically disconnected. On a psychic level, disconnecting from the "matching pictures" that people use to form relationships renders one psychically "invisible". It seems to angry, survival-driven A that B is really "not there". B is not projecting the "matching energy" which says "I feel fear too. Either you hurt me or I hurt you or both, that's what the reptile brain says we have to do." B's lack of fear response makes B invisible to A; and A goes looking elsewhere for someone else to match A's angry fear pictures. A must look for another angry-fear partner because B is not matching A. It is important to note that compassionate B is not being courageous, or being ethical, or rationalizing, or psychologically suppressing B's awareness of the terror and survival response. B is practicing meditation. The practice, for those who recognize its value, substantially prevents violence toward the practitioner due to the psychic "invisibility" effect of "not matching" the aggressor. The practice of meditation eliminates "ignorance" of the instinctive survival response, and replaces that ignorance with the "wisdom" of compassion. That's how it works! How are "compassion" and "sympathy" so different in psychic practice? The difference is in the motive. "Compassion" is the act of attributing full human value to another human being. Compassion is the opposite of dehumanization. To feel compassion for another human being, one need not agree with the person. One might in fact violently disagree with the object of one's compassion. One might have a legitimate social ethical reason for having an oppressive relationship to the person, including imprisonment, police control, wartime brutality, tax collection etc. The socially oppressive relationship would not however prevent compassion. If I am a prisoner I can feel compassion for my jailer. Certainly I do not agree with my jailer, admire my jailer, or have the least voluntary interest in developing a relationship with him. I resent my situation and heap ethical blame upon the system (karma) that got us into a negative, forced, oppressive partnership in a miserable setting. (Karma is a meta-cultural accounting system that does not conform to ethical law except in the very broad sense of the Golden Rule. "Ethos" means the custom of a particular tribe. Karma often creates highly unethical relationships as seen from a local, cultural point of view.) Compassion however allows me to grant my jailer full human status. I accept that his experience is completely valid for him. In addition, if I am skillful, I can benefit from my awareness of his valid humanity by knowing that since he is a human just like me, his feelings are likely to resemble mine. Free of reactivity, I can target my intelligence toward detecting and avoiding most of the negative energy that he could be throwing at me. Mahatma Gandhi had enormous compassion for the British Colonial oppressors of pre-independence India. He severely disagreed with their position. Gandhi took fierce and radical steps to run the British right out of India, but he never at any time dehumanized his opponents. H. H. Dalai Lama has always asserted that he experiences full compassion for the Chinese oppressors of Tibet. H.H. acknowledges absolute disagreement with the Chinese position, and he has committed his life to removing the Chinese military government from Tibet. But H.H. at no time dehumanizes the enemy or says that because of their moral wrongs, the enemy loses humanity. There is no question that, politically, financially, emotionally, or culturally each incarnated human has and will continue to have enemies! Ari bhava the house of imbalances (enemies, debts, disease) is present in every human birth. Compassion does not suppress or deny the reality of enemies, criminals, or exploiters. Compassion simply overrides the human survival instinct to dehumanize the enemy. OK, then what is sympathy? The two words "compassion" and "sympathy" are very similar in normal language, but in psychic practice we distinguish between:
Sympathy is considered a virtue by most types of social ethics, because sympathy is a calming and harmonizing behavior. Sympathy is believed to enhance peaceful relationships. Sympathy is often confused with love and affection - but it's important to understand why sympathy isn't love, and why sympathy isn't usually a good thing in relationships. Psychically, sympathy is a problematic low-awareness behavior akin to guilt, pity, Stockholm Syndrome etc. Sympathy means psychically "matching" another person's feelings, identifying with another person's emotions and allowing that person's emotions to mix with one's own. Compassion requires clear separation between two minds. Clear separation has no emotional or rational content. Clear separation is a psychic condition of complete neutrality to the other person's thoughts and feelings. Neutrality is neither attraction nor rejection; neither agreement nor disagreement. In a state of compassion, the other person's reality can be acknowledged and validated without getting involved in any reactions to what they are doing or not doing, thinking or not thinking, and - especially - feeling or not feeling. The essential prerequisite for achieving compassion is the ability to manage one's own instinctive, self-defensive responses to the presence of another human in one's psychic environment. The essence of this self-management capability is knowing how to enter a state of neutrality toward another person. Sympathy involves the merging of two (or more) minds, and the loss of clear boundaries between identities. Sympathy involves the voluntary or involuntary loss of neutrality, loss of separation and, unfortunately, loss of compassion. Many people confuse sympathy with compassion, but in fact these two conditions are opposites - psychically speaking. Sympathy is highly reactive and merging. When sympathizing with a victim the sympathizer can feel anger and hate which dehumanize the oppressor. When sympathizing with loss, the sympathizer gets stuck in reactive guilt and grief that prevents compassionate action toward healing. Sympathy is a "stuck" state, a reactive miasma of over-identifying with other people's trauma, that erodes clear neutrality and blocks the compassionate intelligence which is needed to heal the wound. Sympathy is identifying with someone else's reptile brain. When stuck in sympathy, all the intelligence in the relationship is engaged in matching energy. In the very short term, "matching energy" can be a bonding experience. But in the longer term, investing the psychic energies in bonds of sympathy leads to an us-against-them gang mentality. Sympathy keeps its participants in psychic bondage to the matching emotion. A single defensive emotion - national pride, shared fear of a common enemy, cultic love of the guru - can temporarily bond a group. But these bonds of sympathy prevent independent perceptions. Sympathy prevents neutrality. Bonds of sympathy require repeating and intensifying the shared emotion, and to dehumanize everyone who does not match the group energy. Sympathy vs. compassion in marriage: In marriage in particular, bonds of sympathy are a poor foundation for lasting happiness. A couple that uses the "us against them" attitude toward the outside world creates the illusion of solidarity based on sympathy. But in the process this exclusive solidarity prevents the formation of community. Sympathy isn't love. Sympathy is "codependent" matching energy, which keeps both people stuck in their trauma & blocks the neutral awareness they need to find new ways to heal. However, neutral awareness & ongoing validation of the humanity of the Other - regardless of whether we emotionally comprehend or rationally agree with the partner - form the only truly viable foundation for marriage.
If there was less sympathy in the world there would be less trouble in the world. ~~ Oscar Wilde
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updated: 04 July 2010