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You know, human beings always suffer because of egoistic causes, humanly. Even when, for instance... they lose someone they loved, and suffer and weep, it is not over the state of that person they weep, for most of the time, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, they do not know the state of the person, they cannot even know whether that person is happy or unhappy, whether he is suffering or in peace, but it is over the sense of separation they themselves experience, because they loved to have that person near them and he has gone. So, always at the root of human sorrow there is a turning back upon oneself, more or less conscious, more or less—how to put it? —acknowledged, but it is always that. Even when one weeps over another's misery, there is always a mixture. There is a mixture, but as soon as the psychic gets mingled in sorrow, there is an element of "reversed compassion"...which comes into being and, if one can disentangle the two, concentrate upon that, come out of one's ego and unite with this reversed compassion, through this one can come into contact with the great universal Compassion which is something immense, vast, calm, powerful, deep, full of perfect peace and an infinite sweetness. And this is what I mean when I say that if one just knows how to deepen one's sorrow, go right to its very heart, rise beyond the egoistic and personal part and go deeper, one can open the door of a great revelation. That does not mean that you must seek sorrow for sorrow's sake, but when it is there, when it comes upon you, always if you can manage to rise above the egoism of your sorrow—seeing first which is the egoistic part, what it is that makes you suffer, what the egoistic cause of your suffering is, and then rising above that and going beyond, towards something universal, towards a deep fundamental truth, then you enter that infinite Compassion, and there, truly it is a psychic door that opens. So, if someone sees me shedding tears, if at that moment one tries to unite completely—you understand, to enter into these tears, melt in them—this can open the door. One can open the door and have the full experience, a very exceptional experience, which leaves a very deep mark upon your consciousness. Usually it is never effaced. But if the door closes again, if once again you become what you are in your ordinary movements, that still remain somewhere behind and you can go back to it in moments of intense concentration; you can go back to it and you feel once again that immensity of an infinite sweetness, a great peace, which... understands everything but not intellectually, which has compassion for all things, which can embrace all things and so heal all things. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/26-may-1954#p24</ref>

Compassion is an essential psychic virtue. It appears in the consciousness only when the psychic being takes part in active life…

It is only when the psychic consciousness is all-powerful in the being that compassion for all that needs help, in whatever domain, and gratitude for all that manifests the divine presence and grace, in whatever form, are expressed in all their original and luminous purity, without mixing compassion with any trace of condescension or gratitude with any sense of inferiority.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/transcripts-of-experiences#p1</ref>

==Compassion and Its Practice==

===By Transcending Pity===

There is a point where all the virtues are united: it is a point that goes beyond the ego. If we take this faithfulness, if we take devotion, take love, the meaning of service, all these things, when they are above the egoistic level, they meet, in the see that they give themselves and do not expect anything in exchange. And if you climb one step higher, instead of its being done with the idea of duty and abnegation, it is done with an intense joy which carries within itself its own reward, which needs nothing in exchange, for it carries its joy in itself. But then, for that you must have climbed quite high and must no longer have that turning back upon yourself which, of all things, pulls you down lowest. That kind of... that sympathy, full of self-pity, wherein one cajoles and caresses oneself and says, "Poor me!", that, indeed, is something terrible, and one does this so constantly, without being aware of it. This turning back upon oneself, a kind of degrading self-compassion, in which one tells oneself in a tone so full of pity, "Nobody understands me! No one loves me! No one cares for me as people should!" etc., and one goes on and on.... And now this is really terrible, it draws you down into a hole immediately.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/23-june-1954#p30</ref>

Sri Aurobindo always reminds us of the fact that the Divine is everywhere and in everything, and asks us to practise a true compassion, as is so beautifully expressed in this aphorism,"Examine thyself without pity, then thou wilt be more charitable and pitiful to others."

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/13/relations-with-persons-outside-the-ashram#p2</ref>

Self-pity is always born of self-love; but pity for others is not always born of love for its object. It is sometimes a self-regarding shrinking from the sight of pain; sometimes the rich man's contemptuous dole to the pauper. Develop rather God's divine compassion than human pity.

Not pity that bites the heart and weakens the inner members, but a divine masterful and untroubled compassion and helpfulness is the virtue that we should encourage.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-529-530#p1,p2</ref>

The passion of pity with its impure elements of physical repulsion and emotional inability to bear the suffering of others has to be rejected and replaced by the higher divine compassion which sees, understands, accepts the burden of others and is strong to help and heal, not with self-will and revolt against the suffering in the world and with ignorant accusation of the law of things and their source, but with light and knowledge and as an instrument of the Divine in its emergence.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-release-from-the-heart-and-the-mind#p7</ref>

===By Oneness===

...by our spiritual growth we can become one self with all beings, know them as part of our self, deal with them as if they were our other selves; for then the division is healed, the law of separate self-affirmation leading by itself to affirmation against or at the expense of others is enlarged and liberated by adding to it the law of our self-affirmation for others and our self-finding in their self-finding and self-realisation. It has been made a rule of religious ethics to act in a spirit of universal compassion, to love one's neighbour as oneself, to do to others as one would have them do to us, to feel the joy and grief of others as one's own; but no man living in his ego is able truly and perfectly to do these things, he can only accept them as a demand of his mind, an aspiration of his heart, an effort of his will to live by a high standard and modify by a sincere endeavour his crude ego-nature. It is when others are known and felt intimately as oneself that this ideal can become a natural and spontaneous rule of our living and be realised in practice as in principle. But even oneness with others is not enough by itself, if it is a oneness with their ignorance; for then the law of ignorance will work and error of action and wrong action will survive even if diminished in degree and mellowed in incidence and character. Our oneness with others must be fundamental, not a oneness with their minds, hearts, vital selves, egos,—even though these come to be included in our universalised consciousness,—but a oneness in the soul and spirit, and that can only come by our liberation into soul-awareness and self-knowledge. To be ourselves liberated from ego and realise our true selves is the first necessity; all else can be achieved as a luminous result, a necessary consequence. That is one reason why a spiritual call must be accepted as imperative and take precedence over all other claims, intellectual, ethical, social, that belong to the domain of the Ignorance.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/the-origin-and-remedy-of-falsehood-error-wrong-and-evil#p34</ref>

==Compassion Towards Animals==

''A:'' One can have the true attitude only when one has attained the consciousness of the divine Oneness; meanwhile it is good always to treat animals with respect, love and compassion. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/17/11-june-1935-2#p1,p2</ref>

No wonder that Ojas [A bullock] gave some trouble. These bullocks are quite intelligent enough to feel the change of people. This new man is not an expert and moreover he has something of a brute around him. You will have to look carefully after him, for I do not like his way of dealing with the bullocks.

I object strongly to his way of twisting the tails of the beasts. If somebody twisted one of his limbs like that, what would he say? And I am pretty sure that our bullocks are more sensitive than he is. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/3-september-1932#p1,p2</ref>

“You don’t know the first thing about animals! Happily you have a peaceful nature, but animals are extremely sensitive to our feelings or sentiments: if you are afraid, they instantly get afraid; if you are angry, they instantly get angry; and if you are gentle, kind, affable, they become gentle, kind, affable.” <ref>https://incarnateword.in/agenda/08/may-13-1967#p1</ref>

==Experience of Compassion==

If you come out of it, naturally this does not apply any longer. But while you are in the experience, it is altogether true—at that time. And then, if you push this, these experiences, farther (and this is exactly what happen to people who try to identify themselves consciously with the Divine), when you attain this identification and have the consciousness of the Divine in you, instantly you feel that the Divine is everything and everywhere, in all things, that there is nothing but the Divine. And people who have had this experience have said this, they have said, "But there is only the Divine, all is Divine, the Divine alone exists." Yet, when one comes out of the experience, if he continues to say it, he almost tells a lie, in the see that this no longer corresponds at all to the state of consciousness he is in.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/13-october-1954#p15</ref>

=Limitation on the Path to Compassion=

As always, the mind, when insufficiently educated, is the accomplice of the vital being and the slave of the physical nature, whose laws, so overpowering in their half-conscious mechanism, it does not fully understand. When the mind awakens to the awareness of the first psychic movements, it distorts them in its ignorance and changes compassion into pity or at best into charity, and gratitude into the wish to repay, followed, little by little, by the capacity to recognise and admire.