Having gone beyond the mind-made opposites, you become like a
deep lake. The outer situation of your life and whatever happens
there is the surface of the lake. Sometimes calm, sometimes windy
and rough, according to the cycles and seasons. Deep down, however,
the lake is always undisturbed. You are the whole lake, not just the
surface, and you are in touch with your own depth, which remains
absolutely still. You don’t resist change by mentally clinging to any
situation. Your inner peace does not depend on it. You abide in Being
— unchanging, timeless, deathless — and you are no longer
dependent for fulfillment or happiness on the outer world of
constantly fluctuating forms. You can enjoy them, play with them,
create new forms, appreciate the beauty of it all. But there will be no
need to attach yourself to any of it.
When you become this detached, does it not mean that you also
become remote from other human beings?
On the contrary. As long as you are unaware of Being, the reality of
other humans will elude you, because you have not found your own.
Your mind will like or dislike their form, which is not just their body
but includes their mind as well. True relationship becomes possible
only when there is an awareness of Being. Coming from Being, you
will perceive another person’s body and mind as just a screen, as it
were, behind which you can feel their true reality, as you feel yours.
So, when confronted with someone else’s suffering or unconscious
behavior, you stay present and in touch with Being and are thus able
to look beyond the form and feel the other person’s radiant and pure
Being through your own. At the level of Being, all suffering is
recognized as an illusion. Suffering is due to identification with form.
Miracles of healing sometimes occur through this realization, by
awakening Being-consciousness in others — if they are ready.
Is that what compassion is?
Yes. Compassion is the awareness of a deep bond between yourself
and all creatures. But there are two sides to compassion, two sides to
this bond. On the one hand, since you are still here as a physical
body, you share the vulnerability and mortality of your physical form
with every other human and with every living being. Next time you
say, “I have nothing in common with this person,” remember that you
have a great deal in common: A few years from now — two years or
seventy years, it doesn’t make much difference — both of you will
have become rotting corpses, then piles of dust, then nothing at all.
This is a sobering and humbling realization that leaves little room for
pride. Is this a negative thought? No, it is a fact. Why close your eyes
to it? In that sense, there is total equality between you and every
other creature.
One of the most powerful spiritual practices is to meditate deeply on
the mortality of physical forms, including your own. This is called: Die
before you die. Go into it deeply. Your physical form is dissolving, is
no more. Then a moment comes when all mind-forms or thoughts also
die. Yet you are still there — the divine presence that you are.
Radiant, fully awake. Nothing that was real ever died, only names,
forms, and illusions.
The realization of this deathless dimension, your true nature, is the
other side of compassion. On a deep feeling-level, you now recognize
not only your own immortality but through your own that of every
other creature as well. On the level of form, you share mortality and
the precariousness of existence. On the level of Being, you share
eternal, radiant life. These are the two aspects of compassion. In
compassion, the seemingly opposite feelings of sadness and joy
merge into one and become transmuted into a deep inner peace. This
is the peace of God. It is one of the most noble feelings that humans
are capable of, and it has great healing and transformative power. But
true compassion, as I have just described it, is as yet rare. To have
deep empathy for the suffering of another being certainly requires a
high degree of consciousness but represents only one side of
compassion. It is not complete. True compassion goes beyond
empathy or sympathy. It does not happen until sadness merges with
joy, the joy of Being beyond form, the joy of eternal life.