I have also begun to suspect that, like some of the animals I have mentioned, they are aware of certain events well ahead of time. I have no acceptable proof, but I am sure Cleve Backster will uncover that fact. After all, if they can read minds.…
Some plants and trees apparently also know when they are going to die. When death is on the way, these trees will put forth a great wealth of blossoms, more than they have ever had before. When summer is over and the seeds are mature, they drop their leaves for the last time.
Whenever there is a big fuss over a new road—especially one that cuts through forest that a few earnest souls are trying desperately to save—you will hear a lot of outraged screaming on both sides. The majority, of course, practically roar that only people are important, and that trees do not count.
To whom are people important? Only to other people, I fear. If all of us were to vanish suddenly, our battered planet would begin to thrive and bloom as it has not bloomed for a long time. The air would become pure again; soon dirty streams would run clean, and hundreds of creatures that are now nearly extinct would flourish once more.
But suppose all the trees died—and don’t think such a catastrophe isn’t possible—what would happen then? Everything would die, for trees are the key to life. Without them, the earth would become as barren as the moon.
13
THE LANGUAGE OF THE WILD
HAVE YOU EVER camped by a stream in the woods, well away from the sounds of man, and listened to the voices of the night?
If you never have, you have missed something tremendous. Not that you will know it is tremendous all at once, the first time you have the experience. The feeling steals over you slowly and captures you. You may not realize the precise moment, but suddenly you are part of it all—you are one with the trees around you, the whispering water and the wind in the leaves, the tick-tocking frogs and countless katydids and crickets, and all the other creatures that make up the orchestra of the living dark. As the dark trembles with their music, you are caught up in it, and you are one with it, and at the same time, without quite knowing what it is you know, you are aware of your place in the entire great scheme of things.
More than that, you find yourself realizing that everything around you is interrelated and is a pulsing, feeling part of a vast enfolding whole. As it throbs with life, you are conscious of the mighty heartbeat under it all.
A heartbeat? Yes, nature has a pulse, and every natural sound you hear will be in time with it.
Go out into the night and listen. Soon you will pick up the rhythm. On Very quiet nights even the rustling of a leaf or the breaking of a twig will be in time with the chirping crickets. If there is a note of discord, it will come from man himself.
Only man, and man alone, is out of step with the marvelous natural world around him. He has locked himself away and become insensitive to most of it, blind to its wonders. Though it cries to him in a multitude of languages for the ear and in one great language for the heart and mind, he cannot hear it.
But the wild hears him. Everything around him knows exactly how he feels and whether his intentions are good or bad. Wild creatures are always aware when something is wrong, and if man’s need is great, they are often willing to help.
Nearly everyone has heard of dolphins coming to the rescue of drowning persons. They have been known to save exhausted swimmers by keeping them afloat and nudging them toward the nearest beach or shoal. How does a dolphin become aware that the situation of a tired swimmer is suddenly desperate?
I have known people to drown with bathers all around them. When I was very young it almost happened to me, because no one realized what was going on. It was impossible to cry out for help. My strength was gone and it was all I could do to gasp for breath. I remember the terrible silent prayer and cry that came from somewhere deep within me. Had there been a dolphin handy, or even a friendly dog, I am sure they would have heard, although the humans around me were deaf to the cry. Yet my prayer was answered, for somehow I managed to reach the dock and cling to it until my strength returned.
A far more anguished prayer and cry must have poured from a Canadian boy named Rheal Guindon, one bitter night back in 1956, because it brought immediate help from the wild. Rheal, a long way from home on a fishing trip with his parents, had the shattering experience of watching their boat turn over and seeing both of them drown. One can imagine how he felt when he finally set out alone through the woods for the nearest town, many miles away.
This happened in November. When night came the temperature went down below zero. By then Rheal was exhausted and shaking with the cold, and all he could do was fall to the ground and pray.
His prayer was quickly answered, for suddenly in the pitch-black darkness he felt the warmth of furry bodies pressing close around him. In the morning he discovered that his protectors were three beavers that had kept him from freezing during the night.
Young Rheal made it safely to the town, and his strange story was checked and reported by the Central Press of Canada.
How did the beavers know that the boy was in such desperate need of help? In his very anguish, coupled with a prayer—which is a call for help—Rheal, without realizing it, was using the silent language of nature that every creature understands.
Knowing the independence of cats, it is startling to learn how often they have come to the aid of people. In The Strange World of Animals and Pets, Vincent and Margaret Gaddis report a typical incident. In Lawrence, Massachusetts, an elderly woman who had been trapped alone in her home by a sudden illness would have frozen to death except for the help of six stray cats. She was unable to leave her bed when the furnace went out, but the six cats, with the help of her own cat and dog, kept her warm until the neighbors came to investigate. The same authors tell of another cat who helped a dog that had gone blind and forever after guided the dog away from danger.
I do not doubt that telepathy has much to do with many such instances, but with it goes a silent appeal that cannot be denied.
Pure telepathy is primarily a mental thing. But nature’s great language is largely emotional. It is the feeling behind the thought that gives it impact. The two, of course, are used together, for the mental and the emotional are always mixed. But as we sift down to the bottom we find that the basic messages—the ones that all living things can understand—are entirely emotional.
There are not many such messages, but their range is wide. Some of the most common are joy, fear, love, and hate. These are followed by sorrow, anguish, despair, and something akin to joy that we might call contentment. Then there are hunger, pain, and the need for assistance, all of which can become strongly emotional messages, and are easily received, possibly even by Cleve Backster’s plants. A number of similar reactions can be emotionally expressed, and one of the most powerful of all is a threat, which most of us have experienced.
Once while hiking in the mountains I came to a glade with an interesting ravine on the other side that I wanted to explore, but as I took a few steps across the glade I suddenly became afraid and stopped. I could see no movement, nor could I hear anything. Yet fear was rising in me, and I wanted to turn and run away from that spot as fast as I could. Something—in this case I will call it instinct—made me ease backward slowly. Not until I was out of the glade did I turn, and then I glimpsed the thicket of young pines with many of them bent over to the ground. Bear cubs do this at play.
The next morning I learned from a rancher that the ravine was the home of a grouchy she-bear with cubs, and that I was fortunate in feeling her silent threat and retreating when I did. Many men, in a similar situation, have been badly mauled when they ventured too close.
I have often watched wild animals—and tame ones too—pause and go through a sort of ritual before proceeding in a certain direction. First, as they stop and look around, there is a twitching of the nose and a turning of the ears as they test scent and sight and sound; then they stand absolutely motionless, as if lost in thought.
I used to think they were trying to make up their minds about what to do next, or perhaps they were listening to something. But now I realize they must be testing the thought waves, and picking up various feelings around them.
Besides feeling uneasiness or fear, most of us have been in places that raised our spirits or lowered them, or brought on a sudden wave of pleasure. This is a common experience. Without realizing it, we are responding to thoughts being broadcast by someone or something in nature’s universal language. And, equally without realizing it, each of us is constantly using that silent language to inform all life around us how badly we feel, or how very much we love a thing, or hate it, or wish it would dry up and blow away.
So it is understandable that some people avoid us, or flowers bloom marvelously for a few of us, whereas for others the very grass dies, and dogs growl instead of wagging their tails. It is as simple as that—except that we humans have forgotten how to use the language, whereas all the wild depends upon it for survival.
There is another source from which knowledge comes to the wild, knowledge of the most vital kind. It is a source that the world of man is almost out of contact with and no longer understands.…
14
THE GREAT QUESTIONS
WE HAVE COME FAR into a vast strangeness, and left behind us a curious trail of unanswered questions. They are puzzles that have worried serious thinkers for generations.
It all began with a pair of white doves that mysteriously found each other after being separated. Why was Zan able to catch them both so easily when the rest of us could not get near them? Remembering the story of Paula and her snake, I am sure that the same instant and mutual feelings, tremendous admiration and trust, had a lot to do with Zan’s strange power. And I am equally sure there was a reason why the second dove flew past the studio windows and looked in at us. It was to attract our attention, especially Zan’s.
Did the dove really want to be caught? How else could it join its mate?
But just how was the second dove able to locate its mate in a totally strange place?
I have little doubt that the two birds were in touch with each other, in some manner, from the beginning. But even if we admit that they were able to communicate, just what could the first dove have told the second?
Only these facts: (1) it was in thick forest, in high country, when a boy caught it; (2) the boy carried it away in a closed vehicle, which wound around in several directions for a short time, during which trip it saw nothing, for the boy kept it under his jacket; and (3) it was taken from the vehicle and placed in a closed box in a dark room of a dwelling in an unknown location.
I can think of no other information the first dove could have given to the second, unless, of course, it was able to read my mind. If I were accidentally lost in an unknown jungle and could broadcast only those bare facts to someone searching for me, I fear I would be forever among the missing. It could hardly have been telepathy, which does not seem to be directional like a beacon, that brought the second dove to my studio window.
My explanation is that the dove made use of intuition, a form of ESP, or extrasensory perception. ESP is defined simply as the power of quickly knowing a truth without the use of reason or the senses. But behind it is that ever-baffling why and how.
Intuition, or ESP, is only one of many forms of psychic ability about which very little is actually known. Certain people, like the famous Dutchman Peter Hurkos, are especially gifted with it. He, and others like him, have been able to locate lost humans and animals and all kinds of lost objects, merely by letting intuition guide them.
How can they do this? There are some interesting theories about it. Such communication seems absolutely impossible, but it has been used countless times, and I have used it myself on occasion, though I have no more ability of this kind than most other people.
The curious truth is that everyone, and every living thing, has such ability to some extent. Too many of us, however, have been taught not to believe in such matters. What happens to a talent we do not believe in and never use? It would be of about as much help to us as an arm that had been tied up for years and never exercised.
Zan’s doves, however, had no one to tell them that some things are impossible. When its psychic sense told the second dove to fly in a certain direction, it had a feeling too strong to be denied. That feeling brought it straight to my studio windows. There, at the sight of us inside, another strong feeling took over, and the dove allowed Zan to catch it a minute or two later.
Intuition becomes even more baffling when we consider how Tom and Clementine were able to use it. They were the cats who set forth into an unknown world and braved an entire continent to find their people. And wasn’t it intuition that guided the dogs Joker and Hector to the right docks and the right ships, so that they could find their masters at unknown destinations thousands of miles across an ocean?
Using intuition, you know something instantly, but it is not knowledge you have worked out for yourself at that particular moment. You are in immediate need of an answer, and it comes to you. You receive it. In order to be received, information must come from somewhere. There has to be a source.
The genius dogs who could solve intricate mathematical problems and predict the future and the incredible horses with the ability to read unopened letters or find lost objects and vanished people—they, too, had to receive information from somewhere.
But from where? And how?
The how of it seems the simplest part. All life is interrelated, and each tiny bit of life is a pulsating bundle of energy with its own electric field. It can send forth an impulse as well as receive it. It is as if each of us and all our fellow travelers on this spaceship, including the plants, were equipped with a personal radio that could send and receive messages.
But where and what is this somewhere that sends us answers when we need them?
If one goes by the evidence—and the evidence has become overwhelming—one might truthfully say that there is a sort of psychic “information center” located within easy reach of every living thing. This “center” is like a vast memory bank, for in it must be stored all thoughts from every source—past, present and, even the future.
In one of my books, about a future time when man is done with killing, I made use of this idea and called it the Pool of Knowledge. Other writers with similar beliefs have given it other names, for the conviction that there is such a repository of thought and information goes back thousands of years. Today we find it in the writings of such great thinkers and psychologists as William McDougall and Carl Jung. These men were convinced that there is a vast psychic realm that influences all life. Jung thought of it as a great collective unconscious, a kind of reservoir of all knowledge from all minds. Even some of the doubting scientists are beginning to nod and say that Carl Jung could be right. A few of the bolder ones have actually suggested that there may be a fifth dimension, which influences and governs everything in this earthly existence.
Think of the center of intelligence as you will, there is still the almost certain reality of it. How else can you explain the way birds and animals have been guided so accurately over the vast distances they have traveled to unknown destinations? How else could Lady Wonder, without ever leaving her Virginia stable, solve the many mysteries that men could not unravel? Call it by any name you wish—the Pool of Knowledge, the Psychic Information Center, the Great Collective Unconscious, or the Fifth Dimension—I am certain of its existence, and I believe that the ability to make use of it is part of the equipment included by the Designer of the Spaceship Earth for the growth and survival of its passengers.
But what of the trees? How can a mindless plant possibly make use of such a system?
There are still matter-of-fact scientists who insist that men are nothing but highly developed animals, and that when we die that is the end of us. But science has already discovered that all matter, including our bodies, is actually a form of energy, and that the body is really a fine
machine that we inhabit during our lifelong journey to another form of energy. So the truth—that we have known all the time anyway—is that we are souls in earthly bodies.
When a man dies, his soul—the thinking and feeling reality of him—leaves the body and goes on to another plane. When a tree dies, something very much aware and full of feeling leaves it and goes on also. If this something is not the tree’s soul, what is it?
There was a time in our history when people believed that only the males among us had souls. After much wrangling and swallowing of pride, it was finally admitted that perhaps females had souls also. But to date not very many of us have been able to swallow enough pride to allow anything like a soul to other creatures.
Life is a strange and curious thing. We know that all life, simply because it is life, has to be closely related. If one form of it has a soul, why shouldn’t all forms of it be so endowed? After all, what is life?
What do the animals themselves think of it?
Two of the several famous dogs of Mannheim, Germany, who were highly intelligent conversationalists, turned out to be philosophers as well. One, a terrier named Lola, often discussed life, death, and the future of the soul, and never doubted that she had one. Another, a dachshund named Kurwenal, said that dogs have souls, and that they are like the souls of men.
If dogs have souls, so do cats, mice, and caterpillars. And if all these have souls, so do mindless plants that can read your mind. After all, what part of them is it that does the reading?
It is time we looked again at ourselves and realized how very limited we are. We must wake up to the hard-to-believe fact that we humans, with almost no comprehension of it, are blindly existing in a marvelous realm of telepaths and mind readers. We are surrounded by them. All other living things, from the smallest creatures to the very trees, are much more aware of us than we are of them. Not only that, but they are in much closer touch with the mysterious forces that govern life, and the great scheme that binds the many parts into a whole. We have forgotten our place in it.
The Strange White Doves Page 6