After the “5” senses and the 6th sense as the
mind itself, I was asked whether “empathy” is actually a means of perception for
understanding or entering into the feelings of others… I am not sure about this
at all, because “empathy” has various meanings, so I will take the questioner
to mean “the ability to discern what another person is thinking or feeling
(without explicit communication of this)”. And I am not sure about this for the
following reason:
We have dissected the mind into its constituent
parts of a) bodily sensations, b) feelings being produced from
bodily sensations or by thought, and c) the logical (or illogical) thinking
process itself. Watching over these three is our “Self-Awareness”, a sense of
presence in and around the body that is not observable as such because it is
the observer, our “I”.
You can test this by sitting still and
following your breathing. That’s all you have to do. Just keep your awareness
on your breath as it comes in and goes out. But you will then see that, within
that awareness, a thought pops up; it just enters your awareness, unexpected or
unwanted. And so you remember to apply your Vichara, or Self-Inquiry method by asking
yourself: “Where does this thought come from?” “From me” is the answer; and then
we have to ask: “And who am I?”, and the chance thought has been transformed
into a question as to who this “me” really is. The intention is to go deeper
and deeper into the mind to see how it really works, if this “me” actually exists
or not, and/or what it really is. “Who am I?” is not a question for outside book-learning
or theorising. It is an intimate, secret plea to one’s “self” or inner being
just in case there is a personal answer waiting for you!
While waiting for an answer and sensing our
breathing again, or perhaps perceiving a sound from our environment,
registering it without classifying or naming it, another thought arises… We
repeat the process as above: “Where does this thought come from?” “From me”, so
“Who am I?” And so on and so forth. After a time, perhaps the mind, on hearing
a sound or smelling a smell, drifts into another train of thought and we
“forget” that we were watching our mind. We have just re-identified ourselves with
the thought itself, and we are those thoughts. “Self-Awareness” has receeded
into the background. We have “forgotten ourselves” and the “I”, the observer, has
been drowned in the thinking process.
By sitting alone very quietly we can see this –
unlike in normal social intercourse, when we are interacting with people, and perhaps
having strong feelings about something and getting lost in our feelings –
Self-Awareness is not there and there is no separation between “I” and “my
feelings” – my feelings are me, and that’s that.
This is why we first of all sit still and
inspect the workings of the mind in repose. It is enough to attempt this for
short periods of time, where we learn how to separate the sensation of “I” from
the functioning of the thinking process. A full exercise may involve placing
the sense of “I” into each specific body part and going through the whole body.
Depending on how many parts you choose, this can take anywhere from 5 to 25
minutes. A full session is rounded out with the sensation of “I” in my whole
body. By that time, attention or awareness may have been lost a few times with
extraneous thoughts or images popping up. If you are sleepy, you drift down
into dream images. But you have begun the process by telling yourself not to
think about anything, so of course, the disobedient untrained mind will think
things up for you, and tell you stories, or present you with a bunch of pretty
pictures and images, maybe. If you are firm enough, you can avoid this and
actually enjoy getting that “I”-sensation into each little part of your body,
and then letting it overtake your entire body, even losing the boundaries of
yourself and expanding outwards. When an “idea” does come up in this state, it
is usually a pretty interesting idea!
This, it seems to me, is a sine qua non
for sufficient mental peace and quiet to be able to start talking about
becoming aware of “others”. Without this, there is usually too much interference
or imagination from one’s own mind. Some people listen to various conversations
at the same time, but when it comes to detecting another person’s secret
thoughts and feelings, can it be done if we are incessantly talking to
ourselves in our heads? If, when I turn my attention towards another, I am
sufficiently calm inside and just waiting and listening for clear perceptions
of the state of that other person, then maybe the messages will get through, uninterrupted
by my own stream of consciousness or unconsciousness. But on the contrary, if I
am all agitated, nowhere near calm inside, what possible channel is available
for gaining information on another person’s state of mind? It does not seem
possible. It’s like when you tune into a radio station and get two channels at
once – you can’t hear the music properly and enjoy it if the static or an
overlapping radio announcer is reciting a commercial. You get a garbled
message.
Then again, the different personality types and
the different hemispheres of the brain (male/female) working in different
people may make these messages more or less possible and perceptible, and some
will be easier to understand than others, depending on our receptivity. Similar
personality types will “perceive” their fellow types more easily, or guess at
what they’re thinking and feeling with greater skill…
But so far, since my musings on this blog are
all about actual experiences within the mind, without delving into theory except as an initial explanation, I cannot yet say how any other sense – apart from
touching, tasting, smelling, hearing and seeing and the attention of our own
Self-Awareness calmly witnessing another person – can provide us with
information about other people, and whether the channel of “similar feeling” (empatheia,
meaning "physical affection or passion") actually does this or not,
or how “intuition” (intuit, "to contemplate") might enter into
this picture.To be able to do this in a reasonable, repeatable and
conveniently verifiable way may have to wait for further progress or some
kind of higher insight… We’ll just have to “take it nice and easy”, as
Sinatra used to sing…
Meanwhile, empathy is just an invention from the
German Einfühlung (one feeling) based on ancient Greek and does not seem
to be a capacity or sense organ of the mind. Where do we see it working in the mind? How is it
produced? Who controls it? Or is it a magical kind of subconscious intuition
that we don’t even control? The Virtues, however, have always been described on
this blog as “gifts to man”, “empowerments” and “forces” that actually exist, maybe
in virtual form if not consciously accepted, and they can and do provide the
mind with strength and power. So “being sensitive to others” really means intentionally being
strong enough to apply Virtue No. 4, Charitableness, Virtue No. 6 Readiness to
Make Sacrifices, and above all Virtue No. 16, Compassion towards Living Beings,
with a touch of No. 18, Gentleness. These strengths of the mind provide
sufficient “empathy” for all practical purposes, because first we set our own house in order, and then, when all is quiet, we can hear what our neighbours are doing...
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