July 21 to
August 21
Such purified selflessness is true compassion.
True
compassion undergoes all suffering as its own, without the loss of independence
in its well-considered judgment. Indeed, independence can only have its source in
compassion. For compassion is spiritual union. Everything remaining external to
us, however, exerts influence or imposes coercion on us. In the mind of another human
being that is not linked with ours by the compassion weaving between us, we do
not live as free individualities. For such a person avoids us or seeks (albeit
in a manner of which he himself is perhaps not aware) to make us dependent on
him. Similarly, we can only turn away from a person, whom we approach without
compassion, or attempt in some form or other to dominate him. On someone whom
we confront with a coercive attitude, however, we are no less dependent than on
someone we avoid. Naturally, this is not a matter of outer behavior but
of a mental attitude. Once we have reached a spiritual union, however, we can
neither be the object of an exertion of power nor do we exert power. It is not possible, because our own being and
the one united with us cannot be the object of our power. Knowledge
therefore excludes power, and compassion is a form of knowledge. Even in the compassionate union with someone deserving revulsion (which is of course wholly
inward), we do not demean ourselves. On the contrary, through it we liberate
that higher element which is hidden in him as it is in everything of a lower nature of which it has only not become conscious. True compassion therefore does not
only make ourselves free, but also liberates those it embraces.
Thus it becomes freedom.
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