Here are more of the details that came to me in that first experience or dream of elephants.

     I was in a circle of elephants in the Serengeti perhaps. There were females, grandmothers, little ones and before them on the ground there was a dead bull, his tusks amputated.  They were mourning and I felt the hum of their grief enter into me and then I was mourning with them.  It was as if I was one of them.
     Then I was taken to the dry plains at the foot of Kilimanjaro to witness - this time with the possibility of understanding -- what I had witnessed there in 1984.  I traveled across familiar dusty roads to a water hole surrounded by reeds and entered the watchfulness of the mother elephant whose small calf behind her, not as large as her haunch, was munching on the tall grasses.  And while I saw, once again, the adolescent lion stalk and crouch ready to spring, feeling more his pride and daring than his hunger, I was, this time, within the awareness of the elephant mother, who was so accustomed to his presence and his timing that she seemed scarcely to follow his movements because she knew the stone ledge behind her and how long it would take him to circle on it, how deeply he would slouch and how long he would pause, waiting, silent, until  -- Then, as if pricked by a thorn, she turned, and facing him, flapped her ears as at an insect as he retreated hurriedly and she returned to her meditation on grass.  I was learning the wisdom of the senses and the depth of maternal watchfulness.
     And again I was taken back to where I had first met the elephants and was passed, as if on currents of air, through all their bodies all at once, through many stories of persecution and captivity, undergoing the uncomprehending despair of the circus performers who, given as joke, a small stool upon which to balance their great bulk, still attempt to communicate something to the puny excited creatures seated so peculiarly in concentric rows before them.  But, alas, the creatures receive nothing of it and make sharp noises that grate on the great flairs of the elephantsí ears.  So if sometimes the elephants rage, if sometimes they hurl a log they are hauling uselessly from one place to another or break their keeperís bones in the frustrated twist of their trunks, it is because their lives and nature are perverted beyond endurance.  We stayed here a long time.  I was involved in the activity of observation but it did not feel the same as being at a circus or a zoo.  We stayed here until I feel the totality of their despair.
     Then once again I was brought into the dance across the savanna, extended into the tree toward the far leaf and the rapture of the fluid beauty of the blooming earth. And back to the death of the bull and the grief of the matriarch of which I cannot speak.
     Then before the time was up, I said, ìThank youî and ìThank youî and ìThank you for taking me into your bodies.
     And said ìThank you,î again as she looked me in the eye and I shuddered from the light that passed through her to me.  They said,  ìWe will teach you the intelligence of beauty.î  I looked into their eyes, and understood that I knew nothing.  ìI will remember this,î I said.  ìOf course,î they said, ìBecause we never forget.î  An inevitable phrase, you say, one that comes glibly to the imagination.  Yes, but I glimpsed something of its meaning.

     What happens when we communicate across species lines?  There are many theories and assertions - that we think to each other in pictures, that we can read each other's minds in language.   I am skeptical of all of these because I don't think we know anything yet.  Nevertheless I have, it seems, experienced something that sometimes feels like a transmission of mind or the opening of a channel of communication.

     When I returned to Topanga after being with the bull elephant, I awakened with the following dream image:

The head of an animal.  Like the water buffalo at Chobe.  It is a head clearly separated from the body but it isnít beheaded.  It is somewhat like a water buffalo and somewhat like a rhino.  Massive, impressive.  It reminds me of Augustine; it carries power.

Something remarkable happened in Chobe and Londolozi.  Isnít it true that the animals came forth to meet us?  That we prayed for this and prepared ourselves and they trusted us enough to let us see their faces free of the disguises we insist upon, the fur and the teeth through which we assure ourselves that we are superior or through which we diminish who they are.

     Then these words appeared on the page, the echo of unspoken words from the dream world:

     ìHumans will heal nothing in themselves or between themselves, they will not heal the world in any form if they do not fully re-integrate themselves into the natural world.  Humans will heal nothing if they persist in seeing themselves outside the natural order, whether for reasons of their putative development or frailty.   Arrogance and fear are a dreadful admixture, and humans are possessed by it.  Only by entering into the network of interconnection and alliance, into the natural order, yielding to the implicit law, is healing even remotely possible."

     ìI would not say it that way,î Peter responded.
     ìHow would you say it?î
     ìI don't find it necessary to offer proofs of God's existence. I would say this: You were in God's world.  In God's world such things exist.  You and the elephant are two sides of a single wave.î
     ìThat is how some physicists speak of reality,î I said.

     I began to try to put words to this insight: There is a wave between us manifesting as elephant on one side and I on another, connected by longing, prayer, hope, insight, vision.  We are distinct, but one and the same, partaking equally of God's universe.  In this universe, there is no dualism; we are each a manifestation of a single source, one consciousness walking toward each other in one shape and in another.

     Now the elephants do not leave me.  They are before me all the time.  It is as if the old bull is continuing to look into my eyes.  The world in which I live is radically changed.  This is another world altogether in which such events can occur, a world we are obliged to learn to understand.

     In the past six months, I have been engaged in studying the Holy Letters of the Hebrew alphabet.   In six months, I have not yet studied all the letters.  In truth it takes years to fathom the meaning of any one of them. Meditating one day after returning, I dared to ask: What does all of this mean?

     The card that fell out of the deck was the letter , Lamed.  It is a card I have studied before and so I knew before I turned to any texts that  which looks so much like an elephant's trunk is, in fact, associated with the elephant.

     Of the path associated with this letter, Madonna Compton says:

     The 22^nd Path is called the Faithful Intelligence Ö because we have a responsibility - if we want to have a relationship with it - to increase our own faith.^iv

     The form of the  represents the aspiration of the truly devoted pupil to learn from the mouth of the teacher.  The literal meaning of the letter  is ëto learn or to teach.î  A seed of wisdom descends to impregnate the full consciousness of the heart.  The heart ascends to receive this point of wisdom.

     The  Ö characterizes the desire and aspiration to understand the nature of the world we live in.  This Ö instinct in the heart to strive to know ëmother nature.í^v

     In Sefer Yetzirah, the letters of Adar,  , Kuf and its sense, is that of laughter.  ìThe strength of the miracle makes all ëturn overí even until the ëworld of deceití turns into ëthe world of truth.í  The miracle of Purim is the secret of the ëelephant entering the eye of a needle,í which even in the vivid, often wild imagination of a dream is ëimpossible,í unless explicitly thought of by day.  The word, ëElephantí relates to the word ëturned over,í or ëwonder,í [as it is said, ìOne who sees an elephant in his dream, wonders of wonders shall happen to himî].  The ësongí of the elephant in Perek Shirah is ëHow great are Your deeds, G-d; your thoughts are very deep.íî^vi

     In Mishnah and Talmud the elephant is called pil.  Jastrow suggests that it was originally naphil, [plural nephilim] meaning ëgiant.í  Ö The Talmud offers a different interpretation for the word pil.  The Rabbis declare that if one sees an elephant in a dream, wonders [pelaíim] will be wrought for him; If several elephants are seen, wonder of wonders will ensue.  [Berachot 56b, 57b].

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     Soon after I returned from Africa, I visited my granddaughter Jamie and described the meeting with the elephants.  ìThe elephant spoke to me,î I said.
     ìWhat did the elephant say?î she asked.
     ìThe elephant said, ëWe are from the same family.íî

     The same night I had a dream and it reminded me of sacred animal funerary rites.  I am haunted by the stories of elephants mourning their dead.  And I am haunted by this story told to me by Christine Jurzykowski, Director of Fossil Rim Wildlife Center of a vigil of giraffes, circling and circling the old one among them who is dying:^viii

     He knew I knew he would die soon - I knew he knew too.
     Ö Meanwhile, the herd had gathered on the other side of the barn.  The giraffes began what looked like gestures of acknowledgment of Old Nick; arching their long necks and throwing their heads back, then dropping their heads forward.  Arching back, then lunging forward. This gesture continued as they paced methodically in a circle.  Then in unison, they stopped.
As we entered the early morning hours, the bull's gestures became more dramatic and pronounced. As if they were learning choreographed dance movements, the females matched the gestures of the bull exactly.  The dance became more animated and the herd moved toward frenzy.  We weren't sure we could contain them, so we moved the bull to a room where Old Nick was out of his view, hoping this would restore quiet.
     Alone, the bull continued his movements.  The females, who could not see the bull, began moving with him. In unison and in silence they continued to bow and arch their necks, pacing themselves to the stamina of the dying giraffe.

     This was the dream I had:

We were walking in the bush in a sacred circle.  The circle belonged to the animals who have walked it again and again.  We walked around twice.  Perhaps we saw the elephants.  The man who was teaching me the way to walk this circle revealed that someone had just died as he walked the circle a second time with the group.  The dead man was offered to the animals.  But this was not the important focus.  What was important was the circle that was walked and the presence of the animals, in particular, the elephants.