Page 106 - ECOlogic Book

Abram continues: “To humankind, these Others are purveyors of secrets,
carriers of intelligence that we ourselves often need: it is these others who
can inform us of unseasonable changes in the weather, or warn us of
imminent eruptions and earthquakes – who show us, when we are foraging,
where we may find the best food or the best route back home. We receive
from them countless gifts of food, fuel, shelter, and clothing. Yet still they
remain Other to us, inhabiting their own cultures and enacting their own
rituals, never wholly fathomable.

“Finally, it is not only those entities acknowledged by Western civilization as
‘alive,’ not only the other animals or the plants that speak . . . but also the
meandering river from which those animals drink, and the torrential
monsoon rains, and the stone that fits neatly into the palm of the hand.” 122

We are as much fascinated by the ways in which the Other is like us as
unlike. Inhabiting, for a short time, the being of another creature, as in the
Council of All Beings, is within the power of our imagination, “Not because
nature is ‘out there,’ but because nature is in here.” 123 The soul of the
animal lives in us. Its totem can guide us.

The mystery deepens when we discover, as Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson did
when he researched his book, When Elephants Weep, that animals show
love and mourn, play and find joy in life; they feel shame, fear, loneliness
and compassion. “The notion that animals are wholly other from humans,
despite our common ancestry,” says Masson, “Is more irrational than the
notion that they are like us.” 124

For minds conditioned by the modern world, it takes a profound shift in
consciousness to experience this likeness. Consider David Abram’s
description of a close encounter with a bison:
Our eyes locked. When it snorted, I snorted back;
when it shifted its shoulders, I shifted my stance;
when I tossed my head, it tossed its head in reply.
I found myself caught in a nonverbal conversation
with this other, a gestural duet with which my
reflective awareness had very little to do. It was
as if my body was suddenly being motivated by

122 IBID.

123 Patterson, Brenda, “Animal Allies: Nature and Other Mothers,”, Winter, 1995/96 Earthlight.

124 Masson, Jeffrey Moussieff and McCarthy, Susan, When Elephants Weep, (Delacorte Press, 1995).

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