A myth has taken hold amongst humans that only humans are spiritual. But what if the opposite is true ? That it is humans which have lost touch with their spiritual selves. And other living beings still leads spiritual lives.
The Yogic nature of animals
Let us look at the evidence. Except for humans, all other animals (and birds and insects and fishes and so on) live close to nature. Here we will use the term animals to denote all other non-human living beings.
Animals are more spiritual than humans. Animals live close to nature, have very few desires, do not accumulate stuff and live for the present. These are all signs of spiritual evolution. This is exactly how an advanced Yogi would live.
Animals have very few needs. They do not hoard things. They do not live for the future. They do not require bank balances, insurance, mutual funds, stocks and so on. While animals do have a limited sense of territorial ownership their ownership does not get conflicted to millions of kilometres of land as humans do in the form of countries. Only human’s avarice & rapacity causes them to accumulate much more stuff than their actual needs.
Ancient Hindu scriptures recognize divinity in all beings
If we define spirituality as simply ‘the existence of the spirit in a being’, then ancient Hindu scriptures have long extolled the principle that all being including animals have souls. The Chandogya Upanishad famously asserts the essential unity of all existence & establishes that the innermost essence of all beings, human or animal, is the same divine reality. The Isha Upanishad begins with the assertion that the Lord pervades everything that moves and lives in this universe. As per Hindu scriptures, every living being, from the animals down to the insects and tiny organisms, possesses souls. In the Bhagvad Gita, Chapter 13, Verse 28, Lord Krishma says “He who sees the Supreme Lord present equally in all living beings, the imperishable within the perishable, he truly sees”.
But animals are less intelligent & do not meditate ?
But people may counter that animals do not meditate. Then how can they reach a spiritually evolved state ? That is exactly the point. Humans need meditation because their mental chattering makes them forget their true selves. On the other hand, animals experience most of the time what we only feel during meditation, a sense of peace and calm and gentle bliss.
But animals are less intelligent, how can they be more spiritual ? This is precisely the point. One of the major goals of meditation, is to slow down the activity of the mind until thoughts cease to exist. Intelligence or mental acuity or thought in any form directly contradicts the needs of spirituality.
With their large brains, overactive minds and complex lifestyles with myriad needs, it is a constant struggle for mankind to reach a thoughtless state. In contrast, animals have much lesser to think and worry about, so it is naturally easier for them to slide into a state of thoughtless bliss. The mistake we humans make, is in assuming that since only we can describe the superconscious state, we are the only species capable of achieving it.
We say that animals act out of instinct. In other words, they have preprogrammed reactions which they are guided by their emotions. But humans can be emotional too, and if the emotions are not a barrier to humans being spiritual, why do we assume the opposite for non-human animals? A revolution was created in Biology when Darwin discovered that human physiology was derived from animals. The next revolution will come when somebody discovers that human emotions are derived from animal emotions.
How humans have lost touch with grounding energy
Except for the ape family, most animals have a horizontal spine. In humans, the Kundalini energy lies at the bottom of the spine. Thus humans have to make a conscious effort to raise the Kundalini against the downward pull of gravity, as taught in practices like Kriya Yoga. In contrast most animals have a horizontal spine which would make it easier for the kundalini to reach the Sahasrara Chakra, where universal consciousness can be accessed.
All animals without exception walk with bare feet. This keeps them ‘grounded’. Because humans have lost contact with the Earth, they’ve lost its nurturing and fulfilling touch. To fill this void and sense of incompleteness, humans start to accumulate stuff. Notice how tribal folk and people who still live in jungles and still walk barefeet have barely any needs. Animals still remain grounded at all times, which provides them energetic healing as well as spiritual nourishment.
The depredations of human animals
Humans are a very late entrant on the earth. It would be a travesty to think only this single species out of millions, has the potential to reach higher conscious states. Maybe it is the opposite, that only humans in the quest for gathering more stuff have lost touch with their inner selves, the Consciousness that permeates every living being. Perhaps the true meaning of Man having sinned, is that Man has allowed a false ego to become his real identity, thereby forgetting his true nature as a child of Spirit.
Humans torture, imprison & enslave other humans as well as other animals. Is that a sign of spiritual advancement ? No other species does that. Echarte Tolle calls all these a symptom of a diseased mind, which has no solution except for replacing it with higher consciousness.
Humans have destroyed huge parts of the Earth’s ecosystems because of their reckless behaviour. Surely, this is not spirituality !! Only humans have the tendency to exterminate almost all other life forms, with the exception of a few like dogs & cats. Wherever humans settle, a monoculture spreads which largely destroys the ecological biodiversity of that area. Our cities are a perfect example of the impact of humans on the Earth. Concretized, with limited biosystems, busy, polluted, filled with toxic fumes & plastic waste, consuming enormous amounts of energy, water & resources. In contrast, a forest would be a net provider of water, energy (produced by chlorophyll) & resources.
With all the evidence at our disposal, we need to start looking at animals & other beings with a fresh set of eyes, and realize that they also have divine souls just like humans.
