Empathy...

For the oneness with all things cannot arise until after you have sought and achieved the sense of their welfare.

This self-realization may be achieved at first, as Upanishads say, in lightning-flashes, in fleeting momentary glimpses, but later this must be stabilized into permanency.

And as the gnani knows the world to be an idea, a mental construct, the sense of unification and love to all mankind is simultaneously its materialization, for he knows no difference between idea and matter.

Hence too the gnani wishes all beings to be happy, loves even his enemy, wishes him no harm, for he knows the truth of universal self-identification.

Thus to the extent a man realizes the truth, he can do good and no more.



--V.S.Iyer from Lights on Advaita