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True Charity CHARITY is commonly understood to consist in rendering material help to
your fellow men, giving alms to the poor, medicine to the sick, money or
material to those who need them and physical service also where that is
required. All this is well and good. The world is ridden with diseases and
privations and calamities. And if something is done to alleviate them, it is as
it should be, activities in that direction deserve
full encouragement. But this does not go far enough, does not touch the root of
the matter. It is the human way of dealing with things and must naturally be
very limited in its scope and efficacy. There is a higher, a diviner way – the
way of the Spirit – for the cure of earthly ills, cure and not mere alleviation.
That was the secret inspiration behind the message of the Christ and the
Buddha. It is not true that when one's wants are met,
one always becomes or remains happy; all paupers are not unhappy, nor are the affluent invariably happy. Happiness is a quality
that depends upon something else and comes from elsewhere: it is not directly
proportional to material well-being. Unhappiness too is a psychological entity
and consists in a special vibration of mind and vitality – and consequently of
the physical being – due to a warp in the consciousness itself, in the core of
the inner personality. The material conditions serve only to manifest it,
maintain or aggravate it, but do not create it – truly they are created by it.
That is why the spiritual healers always refer to the bliss of the Spirit as
the sole remedy for physical ills even, for disease, misery and death. And the
unhappy mortals are always called to turn to the Divine alone in their distress
– bhajasva mam. True charity consists in laying the healing
balm upon the
Page – 187 sore that lies hidden behind all external
miseries which derive from that source and sustainer. And it is in the sole possession
of him alone who has found the bliss of the Spirit and dwells in it always.
Such a person does not require external accessories for his work of healing
and comforting. He need do nothing apparently; he may even appear to be aloof
and indifferent. But his presence itself is a healing power: the patient feels
it and wonders at the ease and happiness that come into him as if from nowhere.
Many physicians have this kind of healing power; indeed without that, a mere
medical man, with his pharmacopoeia, is no physician. It may not be well known and recognised, but it is a fact that a
good part of the efficacy of medicines lies in the subtle influence, the vital
health, that the doctor puts into his medicine or even directly into the body
of his patient. And in the case of a spiritual Bhishak, the power can be
raised to the nth degree. The healer need not even be present at all physically
near the patient; his influence can act very well from any distance. It is quite natural and
inevitable that it should be so. For the healing power is in the spiritual
consciousness, the inalienable bliss of one's status in the Spirit. One
becomes identified with each and every object – person or thing – in one's own
self, in the true being and substance; and the light and happiness that one
possesses there inalienably go out in a spontaneous flow to others who are not
really others but integral parts and portions of the same self. This condition is attained, fully and
sovereignly, when there is absolute egolessness, when there is no consciousness
of a separate person, the dual consciousness of the helper and the helped, the
reformer and the reformed, the doctor and the patient. The normal human sense
of values is based upon such a division, upon egohood, mamatvam. A philanthropic
man helps others through a sense of sympathy giving rise to a sense of duty and
obligation. This feeling of pity, of commiseration is dangerous,
for it puts you in a frame of mind that tends to make you look down upon, take
a superior air towards your object of pity. You become self-conscious, with the
consciousness of your inferior self, that you are helping others, doing good to the world, doing something that raises your value:
this sense of personal merit is only another name
Page – 188 for vanity. Vanity and ambition are the motive powers that lie behind the
philanthropical spirit born of sympathy. To denote a shade of meaning different
from what is usually conveyed by the word "sympathy", modern
psychology has I found another word – "empathy".
Sympathy may be said to be the
relation or contact between two egos; it is a link or bridge between two separate and independent
entities; empathy, on the other hand, means the entering into the I very
being and consciousness of another, becoming that other one; it is
identification and identity. This again is what I spiritual
consciousness alone can do. Sympathy leads to! philanthropy, empathy is the origin of true charity, the
spiritual I compassion of a Buddha or a Christ.
Philanthropy is human, I charity (caritas) is divine.
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