What’s it Like to Be You? Understanding Empathy

What’s it Like to Be You? Understanding Empathy

[00:45] Direct Experience of Being Another

There is much talk these days about somebody being an “empath,” E-M-P-A-T-H. I hear it all the time, people saying to me, “Oh, Thom, you know, I’m a bit of an empath. So when I go into a house, I can feel all the ghosties, and the spirits and the this, and the that, and so on.”

And what this really is intending to get across is someone who is a hypersensitive individual, an HSI. Somebody who is hypersensitive, meaning their sensory perception is so acute that they can and do tend to perceive things that are outside the reach of the average person.

And there is a degree, I have to say, as often happens in human nature, of wanting to attach to such concepts a badge of rank, a little bit of holier-than-thou, as once upon a time we may have called it, and so we have to take care to really properly understand what the word empathy is intended to mean.

Its literal meaning is the capability or the spontaneous process of experiencing from within another. The talent or experience of having a moment where you can feel from within another what they’re experiencing. This is properly the understanding of empathy. And though it may share, on the sound level, similarities to the word sympathy—“I sympathize with somebody,” which is an intellectual sympathy that perhaps has some emotional attachments to it—empathy is supposed to convey the idea of having a direct experience of actually being the other inside their own skin. And so, empathy. 

[02:56] Moving in the Direction of Unity Consciousness Through Vedic Meditation

Now, it has to be said that the totality of all the knowledge and teachings of the Vedic worldview is moving in the direction of Unity Consciousness. So let’s examine for a moment what Unity Consciousness is, and then we’ll back up a little into regular, non-Unity Consciousness flashes of unity with another.

Unity Consciousness is established, through regular practice of Vedic Meditation, when one has a sufficient number of times gone beyond thought, and one has a sufficient number of times established oneself and identified with the underlying Unified Field—the state of Being.

That field, which is the connector of all things, because it is the source of all things. All things turn out to be, actually, Unified Field in various states of manifestation. Unified Field has an absolute, unmanifest layer to it, but it is also all other forms and phenomena which turn out to be undulations of the one, indivisible, whole consciousness field—Unified Field.

Since Unified Field is all there is, then it is appropriate for the Vedic worldview to say, “I am That, thou art That, and all of this is nothing but That,” where That is spelled with a capital T.

I am That, thou art That, all this is nothing but That. This is one of the pronouncements of the Vedic worldview, of the pinnacle of consciousness in Unity. “I am experiencing myself as Unified Field Consciousness. You are also Unified Field Consciousness, therefore Tattvamasi.” This is Sanskrit for saying, “You are also That, you are also me, I am you.”

And then all of This—not just you and me, my friend, but everything surrounding us also—is nothing but an undulation of the one indivisible whole consciousness, which we’ve just established we are. This is Unity Consciousness. It’s brought about through regular, twice-daily practice of Vedic Meditation for a sufficient period of time.

[05:47] An Extension of One’s Own Inner Self

When all the stresses have been, all the accumulated stresses, have been released and relieved, when they have been dissolved in the physiology, then one awakens into a state where my own underlying sense of identity is the one indivisible whole vastness. And then there’s an individual human body emerging out of that.

I am the body, but more importantly, though the body is changing all the time, I am the one non-changing field. I’m the unboundedness. 

Early stage of Unity Consciousness we call Cosmic Consciousness. Next, Cosmic Consciousness grades into a sixth consciousness state, Glorified Cosmic Consciousness, in which I can identify the creative intelligence, lively and personified, everywhere in everything around me, in all forms and phenomena—sometimes referred to as God Consciousness.

And then, with regular practice, one ends up transcending mere God Consciousness and goes into Unity Consciousness. “I am all, and all is the I.” 

In that state, there is a Siddhi. S-I-D-D-H-I. A Siddhi means an extraordinary human capability. A Siddhi, a power. It’s the power of the person in Unity Consciousness at will—and that’s an important thing—with a mere impulse of intention, to experience from within another form or phenomenon, the ability, the talent of experiencing all things, all forms, all phenomena, as extensions of one’s own inner Self.

If something is an extension of me, I can experience from within it with a mere impulse of intention.

[07:55] Big Toe Consciousness

My favorite example of this is to take you through the following exercise.

Right up until this exact moment, you weren’t really thinking about what it felt like inside the big toe of your left foot. But now that we’re examining the concept of the big toe, don’t bother wiggling it, just allow yourself innocently to feel from within the great toe of the left foot.

And for those of you who don’t have a great toe of your left foot for some particular reason, then we’ll go for the right foot, or any other extended part of the body. It all works the same.

Now that I’m deciding to feel from within the great toe of my left foot, I’m right now still me. I have all my predilections, all my capabilities. I haven’t lost anything. I haven’t lost my ability to be balanced or even. I’m just deciding to experience from within the extended Self.

The great toe of the left foot is extended Self whether I wiggle it or I don’t wiggle it. Was there any moment when it was not available to you? Not really. If some little, let’s say, a flea bit you on the tip of the great toe of your left foot, then there would have been a stimulus there, and you would have felt it instantly.

But without specifically intending to feel it, most of the time we’re not sitting around feeling what it’s like to be in the great toe of the left foot. But with a mere impulse of intention, because that great toe is extended Self, with that intention, we can simply experience it. We just switch on, and there it is.

[09:39] Siddhis – Extraordinary Human Capabilities

In Unity Consciousness, that talent, identical to that, which your main part of your self-ness, which is kind of up here in the head, in the upper torso somewhere—this is where you feel yourself most centrally located—nonetheless, has access to this extended Self.

In Unity Consciousness, that limitation of it being only in the body disappears. One gains the capacity to experience extended Self and whatever extended Self is experiencing in any form and in any phenomenon. That includes humans, of course, but is not limited to them. With a mere impulse of intention, one can switch on: What does it feel like to be that tree? With a mere impulse of intention, one can switch on: What does it feel like to be that vaporous cloud up there, building into a cumulonimbus cloud at 100,000 feet in elevation?

And so, true empathy is a Siddhi, an extraordinary human capability that belongs to Unity Consciousness.

Now there’s also a low-grade form of unity. We’ve just analyzed the high-grade form of unity. There’s a low-grade form of unity. I can have snapshots of the experiences of others—usually it’s human beings or animals, limited, relatively limited—where I can acquire a percentage of what it is they’re experiencing from within themselves for moments of time. But because my consciousness, the consciousness of the knower, is not stabilized in the unbounded Absolute, as it is in Unity Consciousness, then my individual consciousness is the knower—lowercase “k,” knower.

[11:52] Limping Dog Suffering

In Unity Consciousness, I am uppercase “K,” the Knower, the Unified Field itself. And this kind of patchwork empathy, where we’re just having little flashes of this talent, one is still lowercase “k,” knower. My sense of who I am and what I am is me—whatever it is, Sally from Nevada or something, who grew up in Hastings and went to high school and was a cheerleader for the football team or something.

And now I’m experiencing empathy with a dog who’s limping. All right. What happens to Sally? Because, in this case, in this hypothesis, Sally is not yet established enough in Being through regular, twice-daily practice of Vedic Meditation, not yet established enough in Being for the Knower inside to be capital “K.” It’s lowercase “k.”

And what happens? Sally consciousness becomes overshadowed by limping dog suffering. The limping dog suffering and empathy with limping dog causes Sally consciousness to be overshadowed, and Sally consciousness identifies totally with limping dog consciousness, which is pretty tough on Sally.

And so Sally may come away from that and say, “I’m a bit of an empath. It’s a bit of a liability because I can experience from within others what they’re experiencing, and then it has an effect on me, and it takes me a while to recover.”

[13:42] Capability to Alleviate Suffering

This is, to be on the very charitable side, perhaps the beginnings of Unity Consciousness. But who is the knower? Who is the knower of the limping dog?

If it is the unbounded universal Self that is the Knower of the limping dog, there is no disability associated with the empathetic experience. In fact, one has at one’s fingertips all the capability, if called into action, to do whatever is needed to alleviate the suffering of the limping dog.

But in the case of the knower being small, the knower being the individualized consciousness only, one gets a glimpse of what it’s like to be another and one is stymied by it. Sometimes one is glorified by it, but other times one is really plagued by it. And so, people who often refer to themselves as empaths frequently are also citing all the problems that they have because of being a lowercase “e” empath.

We want to go beyond this and develop our consciousness to the full. We have to establish ourselves in Being. The individuality needs more and more, regularly and consistently, to identify with The Absolute field, which is your ultimate truth. The ultimate reality of what you are and who you are is not dictated by these individual things of where your body was born and where you went to school, if you did, or what kind of experiences you had under your parents.

[15:35] You Are Totality

The truth of you is not limited to all that. The truth of you is you are Brahman. Brahman is Sanskrit for Totality. You are Totality.

Our first priority in life needs to be that we engage in the effortless technique of going beyond thought and experiencing the merger of our individuality with its source. Its source is the Cosmic Consciousness.

Awakening that layer inside of us more and more every day, then spontaneously, the individualized sense of self is going to grow into the Universal sense of Self. And not only will you develop the Siddhi—an ever-growing capability to experience from within other forms and phenomena—but you will also grow in your capability to do something about whatever it is that’s needed to be responsive to the need of the time, rather than simply having your identity dictated to you by the need of the time.

In one scenario, “I’m experiencing what others are experiencing and, wow, it affects me, and I’m under the weather for a period of time because I have this peculiar talent that I’m not too sure I even want of identifying, having my identity dictated by the world around me.”

In Unity Consciousness, I am Totality, and I’m experiencing everything within my perceptible range. And I can experience the underlying sense of Self-ness of that thing and identify what level of fulfillment it is in or suffering. There’s a ratio between those two, and I respond effectively to any call to action—to engage at the appropriate level and to bring about whatever change or evolution can be brought about as a consequence of the knowledge I’m gaining.

[18:01] Knowledge is for Action

See, this touches on another Vedic principle: that all knowledge is for action. Knowledge is for action. When you have a perception or perceptual capability, it is in aid of action. What action are you capable of mustering in response to what you’re perceiving?

If the action that you’re capable of mustering in response to what you’re perceiving is limited, then instead of being an empath being a blessing, being an empath could feel more like a curse. Being one feels more like a curse.

We want it to be an immeasurable advantage, but for that we have to take the individual knower inside, lowercase “k,” and bring it into uppercase “K,” Knower—Brahman, Totality Consciousness. And this we achieve through practicing Vedic Meditation twice a day, as ever.

Jai Guru Deva.