The Psychic Presence in Animals

Everyone does not have a close relationship with animals. Those who do not may not fully appreciate the nature of animals. Animals represent a development of the vital consciousness. We can expect them to react based on the ways that the vital force operates, with desire, fear, etc. as motivating factors. Many animals in the wild exercise a real cautious attitude near human beings. Birds will move away, cats will observe closely and leave quickly if they feel the slightest bit of discomfort. At the same time, when they sense something they want, water, food, shelter from a storm, they will try to seize it. In the presence of human society, natural instincts are very much warped as animals are forced out of their normal habitat and customary interactions and faced with the limitations, dangers and fears associated with the human life.

For those people, however, who have a closer relationship with animals, another dynamic can become evident through that association — that is, the element of the psychic presence in animals. When we reflect on the characteristics of the psychic presence, we can see that many animals express such a presence. At sunrise and at sunset, times when the world naturally turns to the worship of light, we frequently hear choruses of birds singing with a sense of joy and contentment radiating through their song. We can also appreciate the force of love and selfless devotion that we see in animals who closely associate with a particular person or family. There are numerous documented cases where a dog, for instance, has taken on much larger, vicious animals to protect a young child. There are also similar cases of dogs taking on dangerous large snakes to protect the family to which it has become attached. The dog puts his own life on the line in a selfless act of love and courage, which goes beyond any type of vital bargaining that we see in the course of the ordinary dealings of the vital nature.

There are any number of instances where an animal has been abandoned or lost far away from the home it has shared with a human family, who after a long and trying journey, returns to the family, even if that family has abandoned it intentionally. The animal exhibits an innocent joy at being reunited with the family it has grown to love.

On a day to day basis, animals can exhibit a level of love and caring, not just for their own offspring, but for animals of other species in certain circumstances, and evidenced by saving or fostering orphaned babies. The ability to love unconditionally across species boundaries, not to speak of the close relationship that develops between humans and certain animals, is another psychic trait that can be evidenced.

Or course, not every animal, nor in every circumstance, will evidence such developed psychic behaviour. That is not to be expected, just as we can see that not every human being exhibits what we would call psychic traits of love, goodwill, and an ability to open one’s heart and help or protect others out of a pure sense of universal caring.

Sri Aurobindo observes: “Yes, it is a more simple and honest consciousness — that of the animal. Of course it expects something, but even if it does not get, the affection remains. Many animals, even if ill-treated, do not lose their love which means remarkable psychic development in the vital.”

“The emotional being of animals is often much more psychic than that of men who can be very insensitive. There were recently pictures of the tame tigress kept by a family and afterwards given by them to a Zoo. The look of sorrow on the face of the tigress in her cage at once gently and tragically poignant is so intense a to be heart-breaking.”

reference: Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, The Psychic Being — Soul: Its Nature, Mission and Evolution, Section 6 More Lights on the Psychic Being, pg. 166