Private Session 13 Sep 79

Dreams, Evolution and Value Fulfillment, Private Session 13 September 1979

Observing the antics of your Mitzi gives me an excuse to begin the topic of the evening: animal consciousness.

I want to begin simply by having you question some concepts taken quite for granted – to question much.

It is somewhat fashionable to see man as always nature’s despoiler, as the destructive member of nature’s family, or even to consider him apart from nature, who was given nature as his living grounds.

It is somewhat fashionable to see man as … the creature who dirties his own nest, and I am not condoning much of man’s behavior in that regard.  However, there are other issues, and questions seldom asked.  You ignore the fact that [overall] the consciousness of animals has its own purposes and intents.  It is true that animals are slaughtered under the most cruel of circumstances for human consumption – for then they are treated simply as foodstuff.

Buffaloes do not roam as they did before.  There are thousands of farm-bred animals, however [and have been], all throughout civilization, alive for a time, well-cared-for for a time – animals who in usual terms would not exist except for man’s “gluttonous” appetite for meat.  That is the way the issue is often considered.  It seldom occurs to anyone that certain forms of animal consciousness came in physical form [by choice], that certain species are prized by man and protected, or that the consciousnesses of such animals had anything at all to do with such an [overall] arrangement.

You cannot say that such animals came out ahead of the bargain, but you can say that the species of man and certain species of animals together formed an arrangement … that did have benefits for both.  Man is more a part of nature than he realizes, and in the greater realm of activity he cannot take any actions with which the rest of nature does not agree for its own reasons.

Remember here other material given about cellular communication, for example, and the vast web of intercommunication that unites all species.  Of course animals can communicate with man, and of course man can communicate with other species – with all species.  Such communication has always gone on.  Man cannot afford to become aware of such communication at this point, simply because your entire culture is based upon the idea of the animals’ “natural” subordinate position.  The men who slaughtered animals cannot afford to treat those animals as possessors of living consciousness.

There is, beneath it all, an important unity, a sense of communion, as one portion of earth’s living consciousness dies to insure the continued life of all nature.  That natural sacrament, however, turns into something else entirely when the gift is so misunderstood, and when the donor is treated so poorly …

Basically [many farmers love] animals for themselves, and delight in their ways – but by itself “delighting in animals” is not considered particularly virile enough.  In your society, if you like animals you must not like them for themselves, but for other reasons.  If you want to be with animals then you must become a farmer, or a veterinarian, or a cattleman, or whatever …

Many animals enjoy work and purpose.  They enjoy working with man.  Horses enjoyed the contributions they made to man’s world.  They understood their riders far more than their riders understood them.  Many dogs enjoy being family protectors.  There are deep emotional bonds between men and many species of animals.  There is emotional response.  Dolphins, for example, respond emotionally to man’s world.  The animals on a farm are emotionally aware of the overall psychological content of the farmer’s life and [that of each member of] his family …

Consciousness is filled with content – any kind of consciousness.  [The farmer’s] animals understand that in a certain fashion he is a midwife, responsible for some of their births.  Food comes from his hands.  The animals understand, on their own, that life on any terms that are physical ends with death – that the physical properties must be returned to the earth from which they came …

[Animals] do not blame [human beings] for anything.  If as a species you really found yourselves communicating with the animals, you would have an entirely different culture, a culture that would indeed bring about an alteration of consciousness of the most profound nature.

You have forgotten, conveniently, how much you learned from all of the animals, as I have mentioned in past sessions.  You learned a good deal of medicine from watching animal behavior: You learned what plants to avoid, and which to cultivate.  You learned how to rid yourself of lice by going into the water.  You learned social behavior by watching the animals.  At one time, you could identify with animals, and they with you to a remarkable degree.  They have been your teachers, though they did not choose your path.  Obviously, you could not have gone your way [as a species] had it not been for animals.

Domesticated animals have their own reasons for choosing such a state.  It is, for example, usual enough to think that your cats should ideally run outside in the open, because in the wild that is what cats would do.

Cats in the wild were, in those terms of time, exploring one kind of nature.  In that kind of nature, with a natural population taken care of in the environment, there would be far fewer cats than there are now.  Your cats would not exist.  Why does it seem antinatural, even slightly perverse, for a household cat to say, prefer fine cat food from a can, when it seems he should be eating mice, perhaps, or dining upon grasshoppers?  The household cat is exploring a different kind of nature, in which he has a certain relationship to human consciousness, a relationship that changes the reality of his particular kind of consciousness.

Your cats are as alive in all ways inside of the house or out.  They understand their relationship with your human reality.  They enjoy contributing in your life as much as any wild animal enjoys being a part of its group.  Their consciousnesses lean in a new direction, feel about the edges of concepts, sense openings of awareness of a different kind, and form alliances of consciousness quite as natural as any other.