The Saint-Scientist Vallalar has a precise answer for what you came here for, which is how to live with compassion. This article explains his teaching of compassion not as a feeling to cultivate, but as the active practice that opens the body to divine grace-light, transforming it in three distinct stages. Much writing about compassion stays at the level of concept without a precise path. Vallalar presented it as a mechanism with predictable, physical results. To understand why this matters, we need to look at the man who documented it.
The Life and Teachings of Vallalar
Ramalinga Swamigal, known as Vallalar, was a 19th-century Tamil mystic whose collected writings, the Thiru Arutpa, remain one of the most extraordinary spiritual records ever produced. His life was filled with remarkable featsβthough he dismissed anything supernatural, insisting that everything he did was a science. He established a center for feeding the poor that has operated without interruption for over 150 years, serving food to all who come, day or night. On January 30, 1874, accounts from those present record that he locked himself in a room in Mettukuppam and was never seen againβhis body never found. This event is documented by government records and by British Collector John Henry Garstin.
The Central Practice for Compassion
Vallalar gave a single mantra as the core practice for invoking grace and developing compassion. This Mahamantra is not a request but an acknowledgment of the forces of grace and compassion as the supreme realities of existence. He taught that its recitation attunes the practitioner to these forces.
The mantra is:
AruαΉ Perum JΕti β AruαΉ Perum JΕti β
TaαΉi Perum KaruαΉai β AruαΉ Perum JΕti
The direct translation is:
The Vast Grace-Light. The Vast Grace-Light.
The Incomparable Great Compassion. The Vast Grace-Light.
Reciting this, even silently, turns oneβs attention toward the very qualities one seeks to embody. It is the foundational sound-current of his entire path.
Compassion Is Not a FeelingβIt Is a Practice
For Vallalar, compassion was not an emotion to be felt. It was a specific, disciplined practice called Jeeva Karunyamβactive compassion and care for all living souls. He taught that feelings are unreliable; they come and go. A practice, however, can be performed consistently regardless of oneβs emotional state.
Jeeva Karunyam is the active relief of suffering wherever one encounters it. This begins with the most fundamental forms of suffering: hunger, thirst, poverty, and disease. It is a commitment to see suffering and act to alleviate it without hesitation.
Vallalar did not teach this as a moral virtue to aspire to. He taught it as a functional necessity. Without the constant, active practice of Jeeva Karunyam, he explained, the soul remains closed off from the divine grace-light, which he called Arut Perum JΕti.
Why the Path to Compassion Begins on Your Plate
The practice of Jeeva Karunyam begins with the most immediate and controllable act: what one puts on the plate. Vallalar taught that eating the flesh of other beings directly ingrains their fear and pain into oneβs own body. This act, he explained, makes it impossible to achieve the purity required for the grace-light to enter.
In his text Nithya Karma Vidhi, he provides detailed guidance on a plant-based diet. He identified specific foods that support the bodyβs purification and others that hinder it. The core principle is simple: do not cause suffering for your sustenance. By choosing not to participate in the suffering of animals, one takes the first and most critical step in the practice of compassion.
This is not about dietary purity for its own sake. It is about removing the primary obstacle to receiving grace. A body that consumes the suffering of others, he taught, cannot become a vessel for divine light.
How to Live with Compassion: The Mechanism of Grace-Light
Here we arrive at the core of Vallalarβs teaching. Compassion is the mechanism by which divine grace-light enters the soul and transforms the physical body. It is not that being compassionate earns you grace as a reward. Rather, the act of compassion itself opens a channel for grace to flow in.
When you act to relieve the suffering of another beingβwhether feeding a hungry person or choosing a plant-based mealβyou are performing an action aligned with the nature of the divine. This alignment, he taught, creates an opening. Through that opening, Arut Perum JΕti enters and begins its work of purification and transformation.
Every act of Jeeva Karunyam widens this channel. Over time, the consistent practice of active compassion allows a steady stream of grace-light to permeate the physical body, leading to profound changes.
The Three Bodies of Compassionate Living
Vallalar documented three distinct stages of bodily transformation that result from the sustained practice of Jeeva Karunyam and the influx of grace-light.
The first stage is the Suddha Deham, or Pure Body. This body becomes immune to disease, decay, and the need for sleep. He taught that this is achieved when the practice of compassion has purified the physical form of all dense, negative influences.
The second stage is the Pranava Deham, or Primal Body. This body becomes subtle, visible but not tangible, and is no longer subject to the laws of conventional physics. It is a body of pure sound and light, perceptible to others but not solid.
The final stage, which Vallalar alone is documented to have achieved, is the Gnana Deham, or Wisdom Body. This is the complete dissolution of the physical form into the Vast Grace-Light itself. This ultimate transformation is similar in description to the rainbow body phenomena documented in some Tibetan traditions, where a masterβs body dissolves into light upon death. Vallalarβs final act, dematerializing without a trace, is considered the demonstration of this state.
One Small Act of Compassion Today
The path Vallalar described may seem vast, but it starts with a single step. Today, take one moment to practice Jeeva Karunyam consciously.
When you see another living beingβa person in traffic, a bird on a wire, an insect on the groundβsilently recite the Mahamantra once for them: AruαΉ Perum JΕti β AruαΉ Perum JΕti β TaαΉi Perum KaruαΉai β AruαΉ Perum JΕti. Do not look for a feeling. Simply perform the action of extending this wish for grace. This is the practice in its simplest form.
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