With regard to this subject of love, sympathy,
compassion, fellow-feeling, pity, upon which rules of conduct must be
based, the following are some of the ways in which it can be shown.
One way would be that the person would follow good
customs of his family, protecting life. But in this particular form now
meant, the internal attitude of mind is not active, and he would not know
why it was done.
Another way in which the factor of love, upon which the
rules of conduct must be based, can be shown would be a desire for others
to develop their spiritual nature. Whereas the way previously mentioned is
simply a protecting of the bodily welfare, the way now meant is a desire
to protect the soul.
Another way would be pity for one's own soul that it
should have been so long, that is, for all time past, in the deluded and
unclean state it was in before reaching the right attitude of mind. And as
a consequence of this pity we should remain aloof from pains and
pleasures, these being enemies to the blissful quality of the real self.
Another way or form of pity is love for other as the
result of thought. Here the thought would be : I do not like pain or
misery, and therefore others would not; so I shall endeavor to avoid
inflicting pain upon them.
Another form of this quality is the refraining from
injuring other living beings because you believe that you will thereby
reach a pleasurable condition after death; but this form is only
apparently a form of love.
And another form is where good comes as a result but
not at the beginning. But if there is any feeling of revenge or hate, then
it is not love or pity. If you vindictively tell a person something
unpleasant in order to bring him to his senses, it is not love, but it is
if there is no feeling of vindictiveness.
There are also two other forms of "daya",
namely, the relative and absolute (vyavahara and niscaya).
That is the end of the subject of what the signs of the right attitude of
mind are.
With regard to this right attitude and its opposite,
the wrong attitude of thought towards the universe, it may be useful here
to anticipate the question - why is the one right and the other wrong ?.
The answer is only repeating that those Masters who have developed all the
potential qualities of the soul, have discovered and taught their
discoveries that in man soul and matter are in combination with matter in
order to live; not only unnecessary, but that by the combination the
natural qualities of the soul are choked up. When in this combination the
soul predominates over the matter, then some of the soul's natural
qualities, love, kindness, right convictions, etc., manifest themselves in
a degree. And this state where the soul as it were overbalances the
foreign forces in us, is what has been called the right attitude as
opposed to the state where the matter overbalances the soul and chokes it
up so much, which state has been called the wrong attitude or state of
delusion, wrong belief etc.
