Acharya Prashant explains that the understanding that emotions are a process comes only to the one who is outside the process. For the one who is not outside the process, whatever happens is personal and real. To alleviate the suffering of such a person, there is compassion, effort, and spirituality. The entire affair is fake, but only for the one who has seen its fakeness. Using an analogy, he explains that a small child locked in a dark room might shout about a ghost. The father knows there is no ghost, but the child's suffering is real, at least for the child. This is where compassion comes in. Compassion is a strange thing. On one hand, you know that this is just a process that has been going on for thousands of crores of years. This child is not crying for the first time; a child cried exactly like this 200,000 years ago. On the other hand, you also know that only you know this; the child does not. This is the meaning of compassion. It is different from sympathy, which means having the same experience as the other person. In compassion, the experience is not shared. The father knows what is happening is fake, while the child's experience is of fear. The father is not afraid. Compassion is also not empathy, which means being on the same plane of consciousness. Compassion is knowing the other's tears are false, but still wiping them, not out of laughter, but because they are real for the other person. The tears are wiped in such a way that the person eventually sees their falsehood. In sympathy, you believe the tears are real, which might encourage more tears. Compassion, however, aims to end the suffering by revealing its illusory nature. Everything is a process, a game. You are part of a long flow. When you are not in the flow, you are real. But whatever you consider yourself to be, you are not that. The speaker advises to enjoy life from the spectator's seat, not as a performer in the circus. When you are inside the game, you cannot understand it. You will get beaten up because you have entered a place where you do not belong. Your place is in the audience gallery, but you have become a performer. It is possible that in the circus, there is a performer with a name just like yours, who looks just like you. You should watch that performer too, but do not forget that just like the other performers, you are not special, not separate, not personal. What is happening in their life is happening in yours. Do not attach your identity to any one performer.
