When Michael came home from Africa in late January, we realized that I dreamed
something of what happened to him. After we left, seven people arrived
from the United States and Europe to work with Michael and Augustine.
Because of our experience with the elephants, Michael and Augustine decided
to incorporate a trip to Chobe into their initiatory work. As
they descended to the river, they saw the bull elephant in the place where
he had approached us. It was as if he had been waiting for them.
They drove to him and sat in his presence. Michael noticed his own
desire for the experience to repeat itself, for the people he had brought
to have a vision. He meditated fiercely, recognizing his hunger, trying
to release it. The elephant left and they drove on. In a dense
area, they came upon a few elephants with several newborns at the side of
a pond. A giraffe was browsing at the far end of the water.
Everyone climbed out of the vehicle to stretch their legs and look upon
this scene. The elephants did not seem to mind the intrusion.
Slowly, approximately three dozen elephants came silently out of the bush
and walked to the edge of the water. Swept up by the beauty of this,
one of the participants took his camera and ran toward them in ecstatic
jubilation. The bulls began to trumpet and stamp their feet.
Michael yelled for the man to return but he was lost in his passion.
More trumpeting and flapping of ears in what appeared to be great anger
and apprehension. After some insistence, Michael was able to get the
resistant man back into the truck, but by now they were surrounded by elephants
and more were appearing on all sides. It was as if elephants had called
for re-enforcement. The people started to drive down the road
but their way was blocked and turning around they saw yet another herd appearing.
Deeply shaken and frightened, they drove cautiously, seemingly making their
escape, and so ventured to pause at the side of a large meadow to watch
the sunset in sight of another large herd of elephants that was browsing
in the distance. But after a few minutes they noticed that these,
too, were drifting in their direction. Cautioned, they made their
way toward the exit and finally found a way to leave the park.
It was inevitable that this occurred.
As Aldous Huxley once warned us: "The Greeks...knew very well that hubris
against the essentially divine order of Nature would be followed by its
appropriate nemesis."ix
Of course, we were busted. We.
Yes, we, for I will not presume this would not have happened if
I were there. After such a singular moment of exchange, it is almost
given that we would presume that the elephants would be overjoyed at our
presence, would recognize our good-heartedness and open themselves fully
to us. Deflation, therefore, is equally inevitable and it was fortunate
that it occurred quickly and precisely and without obvious harm.
Originally, we had come to Chobe on behalf of
the elephants, but such a purpose is easily obscured. Without thought,
we privilege the human, give primacy to our own needs and desires.
Sometimes it takes a lifetime of practice and meditation to set aside
the individual ego. How long will it take us to set aside the species
ego?
Naturally, the elephants felt endangered.
Michael was dismayed afterwards at how persistently the participants focused
on their own danger and not the danger to the elephants, a species that
fiercely protects its young no matter what the danger to themselves which
is considerable as human beings systematically kill any elephants who
attack them no matter what the provocation. Ultimately the group
sat in council and undertook the difficult task of seeing the consequences
of their behavior.
While they were contemplating this in Africa,
I was thinking about what we, with some disparagement, call group mind
and that this train of thought requires me to undo many cultural assumptions.
Group mind, herd mind, following like sheep, these imply a lesser form
of intelligence, without individuality, creative innovation or personal
will. Having watched the elephants and other animals, even for such
a relatively short time, I would like to suggest other possibilities:
What if will is not as exalted a quality as we
assume and what if imposing our will, our individual wills, upon the world
is the factor that is destroying us and the environment? What if
being a carrier of group mind means that one is keenly aware of oneself,
one's place and circumstances and one's relationship to all the others?
What if, simultaneously, one is as precisely and compassionately aware
of the individual place and circumstances of each one of all the others
and their relationships to the whole? What if one is as aware of the others
as one is of oneself? And what if this awareness extends beyond
the reciprocal awareness of each member of the herd or flock also to other
animals, perhaps even other creatures. If this approximates the
natural order, then each individual member is a repository of exquisite
awareness, approaching close to what I think we mean when we say Buddha
mind: an awareness of the field of relationships that is, by its nature,
compassionate and empathetic. I would like to suggest that
to live within the natural world is to engage in a complex and sensitive
conversation, a veritable on-going council of all beings, the very council
and living net from which we have willfully separated ourselves.
For a long time, I have been contemplating what
the etiquette might be between human and animal if we ever enter into
reciprocal relationships with each other. It will require, in the
deepest sense, a change of mind. Perhaps it is not that we need
to see that humans are also animals. Perhaps we also need to see
that some animals, at least, are more than human. Coming into some
recognition of the true face of the others we call animals, what will
be the polite and respectful conventions, the procedures, ceremonies,
formalities, unwritten codes of honor by which we will approach these
beings?
There is a final story I must tell. Simakuhle,
Augustine's wife, is a dreamer and trance medium. Just before Michael
left Africa, she came into the living room and turned on the television.
A newscaster was recounting the unprecedented appearance of two elephants
in a village or suburb of Harare that faces open bush. It seems
that a trance medium from that area has been dreaming the elephants.
She has said that they have been coming to her, that they were reaching
out across the borders from their world to ours and that they must not
be killed. "The elephants are the wise ones," she said, "and they
have much to teach us." When the elephants appeared in the streets,
a few people goaded them and the elephants attacked, injuring, but not
killing, one of the people. An air force helicopter was called into
to scare the elephants away but rangers said they were forced to shoot
the animals before the helicopter arrived because of the danger to human
lives. Much to the officials' surprise, the villagers came out in
great numbers in an unprecedented protest against the slaughter of the
elephants.
I do not
think I called the elephants to me. I think they are coming to us,
calling us. I think they are consciously transmitting cries of anguish
and grief, and some of us are hearing them and are responding.
When we come forth in that way we are re-united with them in a single
wave of consciousness. Peter Levitt is right: Those of us who want
to live in God's world can be part of the same wave.
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