Compassion arises only when you can see that everybody is related to you. Compassion arises only when you see that you are a member of everybody and everybody is a member of you. Nobody is separate. When the illusion of separation drops, compassion arises. Compassion is not a discipline.

 

In the human experience, the relationship between a mother and her child is the closest to compassion. People call it love but it should not be called love. It is more like compassion than love because it has no passion in it. A mother's love for the child is closest to compassion. Why? Because the mother has known the child in herself; he was a member of her being. She has known the child as part of herself and even if the child is born and is growing the mother goes on feeling a subtle rhythm with the child. If the child feels ill, a thousand miles away the mother will immediately feel it. She may not be aware of what has happened but she will become depressed; she may not be aware that her child is suffering but she will start suffering. She will make some rationalization about why she is suffering -- her stomach is not okay, she has a headache, or something or other -- but now depth psychology says that the mother and the child always remain joined together with subtle energy, waves, because they go on vibrating on the same wavelength. The telepathy is easier between a mother and the child than between anybody else. Or, between twins -- between twins telepathy is very easy.

 

Many experiments on telepathy have been done in Soviet Russian -- not of course for religion, they are trying to find out if telepathy can be used as a war technique. They will be able to use it because they are finding clues: twins are very telepathic. If one twin has a cold a thousand miles away the other starts having a cold. They vibrate on the same wavelength, they are affected by the same things within seconds. Because they have both lived in the same womb as part of each other; they have existed in the mother's womb together.

 

A mother's feeling for the child is more of compassion because she feels he is her own.

 

I was reading an anecdote.

 

During the preliminary inspection of a Boy Scout Camp, the director found a large umbrella hidden in the bedroll of a tiny scouter, obviously not one of the items of equipment listed. The director asked the lad to explain. The tenderfoot did so neatly by asking, 'Sir, did you ever have a mother?'

 

Mother means compassion, mother means feeling for the other as one feels for oneself. When a person moves deeply in meditation and attains to samadhi, he becomes a mother. Buddha is more like a mother than like a father. The Christian association with the word 'father' is not very meaningful or beautiful. To call God 'father' looks a little male-orientated. If there is any God he can only be a mother, not a father.

 

-Osho, "Ancient Music in the Pines, #3"