The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 6

SECOND SIGHT

We know that animals generally possess sharp senses to an extraordinary degree. They can hear and smell at a distance far beyond what is normal to the human sense. Give a kerchief used by a man to a dog, it will spot the man among a thousand. An elephant will take you straight to a place miles away where there is water, if you happen to be stranded in waterless surroundings. Where there is no question of sight or smell, even then the animals perceive things in a queer way: an elephant, again, for example, refusing to advance further upon road, because, as it was discovered later on, the road was hollow inside and would have sunk down had the animal walked upon it. There are other countless phenomena to prove the keenness and subtlety of the animal sense or instinct, as it is called.

Perception means contact with the object. Now, what is it that contacts? In ordinary sense-perception, the normal human sense-perception, for example, it is the physical vibration emanating from the object that contacts the physical organ: the distance at which the vibration can be received depending on the

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sensitivity of the recipient nerves. In man the sensitivity is limited, in the animal it is highly intense. This is however, only one factor of the phenomenon. We will explain.

As it is well-known, there are three levels of consciousness: the physical, the vital and the mental; for the present we leave out of consideration the fourth or the spiritual (including the psychic). Not only so, in each level or plane all the others are also involved i.e. lie secreted. Thus, in the mind there is a vital mind and a physical mind, in the vital there is a mental vital and a physical vital. So, in the physical too there are these three grades: (1) physical physical, (2) vital physical and (3) mental physical.

We will now better understand the process of contact in sense perception. The purely material contact, physical vibration touching the physical nerves of the particular organ is an instance of the physical physical perception: the dog smelling or the elephant hearing at extraordinary distances. We have heard of men who, by putting their ear upon the ground, are able to catch sounds coming from a great distance and practically inaudible to others standing by. But there is another class where the material vibration is not at issue, it is the vital vibration in the physical touching the vital physical of the receiver. The elephant finding the water or sensing

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the hollow road is an instance in point. The mental physical, the last of the three is a kind of intuition in the physical, that is what is usually called 'instinct'. A cat, for example, put in a sack and banished miles away from its home, will find its way back; a dog will go round the world almost and find and recognise its master even many years after (the first to recognise Ulysses was his dog). In man too the vital physical, more especially the mental physical not unoften finds room for play, although his physical physical i.e. purely material sensibility is extremely limited. This limitation of the physical sensibility in general, to whatever sphere it may belong, is due to the intellectual or rational bias that has developed in him. In the more unsophisticated races or types the sensibility is still maintained. Man can, however, cultivate, consciously develop these faculties: it then becomes what is called a system of Yoga. A familiar example of the mental physical action as cultivated in man is offered by the water diviner or dowser, as he is called. But, as I have said, the normal effect of human rationality is to inhibit the spontaneous action of the senses as it is natural with the animal.

It is interesting to note that animals in the wild state maintain intact their instinctive capacity, their "second sight", but begin to lose it when they live with men, come under the influence of human mind

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and reason, become "domesticated". A cow habituated to free grazing in the fields will never touch the poisonous grass, will always avoid it and take only the harmless and healthy variety; but kept within the stable, accustomed to a closed life, it loses its natural instinct, gets confused, does not know how to distinguish the right from the wrong food, being always given ready-made things by the master.

Human contact has thus a harmful effect upon the animal's instinctive life. But in another way it may have an uplifting influence too. Some of the refined human sentiments—sympathy, gratitude, faithfulness, self-sacrifice—in a pronounced human way find expression in animals that are domesticated and live close to man and within the human atmosphere. It is true many of these feelings are not totally absent in the animal kingdom (especially in the higher strata) in its natural or wild state, but they belong to the level of pure feeling or impulse and have not risen to the level of sentiments which have a mental element infused into their vital stuff. Indeed a strong mental element, a reasoning capacity sometimes very clearly develops in the domestic animal.

The animal acts by instinct, we say; that is to say, it goes straight to the thing to be done: in order to do a thing it does not make a choice between possibilities, there is no selective process in its consciousness. It is

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the human consciousness alone that says, "this is not to be done, but that to be done, not this but that" or puts the question, "which one, to be or not to be?" This is what we mean by discrimination or deliberation. Normally, this faculty is absent in the animal. We have said of refined feelings in man; "refined" here need not mean always ennobled or morally elevated; it may mean also more subtle, more complicated and be applied to some baser—acute perverse—feelings which are perhaps peculiarly human. Domestic animals sometimes contract them from men: jealousy, spitefulness, vengeance, vindictiveness of an extreme degree are likely to be found more among animals living with men than those that are in the wild state. We have heard of elephants brooding over a hurt or even an insult for long months and taking revenge when occasion presents itself. And we have heard of a cat jumping out of a window into the street below and killing itself simply because it thought its mistress showed more love towards another cat.

The humanising of animals living with men, through its good and bad effects, has an evolutionary value: that is to say, some animals in that way attain almost to a human status in their soul. And occultists state that souls do pass in this manner from the animal to the human incarnation.

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