(Original post: Je človek iba zviera?)
I love
animals.
Dogs wagging their tails so happily
their entire body bends right and left. Does, watching me motionlessly from a
distance, only to jump off in between trees with their distinctive bark.
Leopards posing royally on a tree branch with a zen-master calm. Round-eyed
squirrels moving up a tree with lightning speed and caffeine high.
Every
animal is fascinating for what it is. An ant is always going to be a 100% ant,
eagle 100% eagle, sloth 100% sloth. They will never pretend to be something they're not, and they will never be nervous or
anxious when somebody is watching them. They live in harmony with nature and
what they are. You can pick any animal – it will always be a unique while at
the same time a primary specimen of its kind. They are part of nature in the
fullest sense of meaning; their whole behavior is self-evident and natural.
People, on the other hand, are way
more complicated. There is no easy way to describe us. Maybe that's why we stray so much when we try to find our
own identity. We're calling ourselves „intelligent animals“, as is the trend of
our times, but is that really so?
It never occurred to people in the
past to liken themselves to animals; common sense could instantly see the
massive difference between us and them (behavior, relationships, way of life).
The breakthrough came with the advent of evolutionary theory that should have
provided the definitive proof of our origin in apes. Really bizarre, because
the entire evolution of humans is one enormous act of differentiation from animals if we think
about it.
The fact that we are subject to
evolution is not so much a sign of us being animals but rather an
attribute of how creation works. Development and maturation, external and
internal, are some of its laws, even its meanings.
Differences between humans and animals are apparent from the very beginnig. Evolution, in
general, is a process of natural selection and particularly adaptation to environmental conditions.
But when it comes to humans, this process of adaptation goes mainly the other
way – they shape their environment according to themselves, for better or for
worse, although they should never be in disharmony with nature.
To say that human is only an
intelligent animal is equally as erroneous as to say that animal is just a
„stupid“ human. Something is „not right“ about both of those statements. Sure,
we have some features in common when it comes to our biology; needs such as
food intake which we have to meet for our bodies to survive in the material
world. However, we cannot base our identity on our bodies. Life and Identity
take place on the inside, and the result of that manifests itself on the
outside.
Because unlike an animal, a human is
a spiritual being. The spirit is
his innermost essence; the animal only has an animal soul. Human IS spirit. He only
dresses the body like a coat
while being incarnated into the material world.
We can say that we are the people of
science, therefore the study of the inner life of human beings is not relevant to
us. Science originates from intellect and that originates from matter, therefore
since science is using solely intellect for its research, it cannot go beyond
the matter. All that is intangible basically doesn't exist for science; it
denies it vehemently or at least doubts it. How can spirituality be researched
and measured? However, if we want to see differences between humans and animals
and understand our essence, we must
explore the inner workings of human beings, go beyond the physical, and understand once and for all, that
spiritual and the material do not exist separately but are inextricably linked
and interact with each other.
The most significant difference
between the spiritual and non-spiritual creature – that is between human and
animal – is that human has free will.
He is „burdened“ by everyday decisions. Even things he does more or less
automatically, like going to work, are the result of a conscious
decision, and he practically still decides on it subconsciously every day. He
must constantly want something to progress forward, something to believe in,
and something to reach for. He is able to judge.
The animal, on the other hand, is
a creature of instinct. Its driving force is the primary instincts of how
to survive, to fill the stomach, and to reproduce. An animal cannot judge what
is right and what is wrong or whether its behavior is seen as good in the eyes
of others. It does not feel pity for the prey it has caught and is going to
consume. With its instinctive behavior, it incorporates itself automatically to
the creation in a way that is harmonious and not harmful, but on the
contrary beneficial. Even if something in its behavior might seem „wrong“ at
first glance, and we feel the need to correct it, it is still beneficial to the
environment from a broader perspective.
For example, if you put a lion to a
running antelope, it would try to catch it, even if it had a full stomach at
that moment. It would hunt it and leave it uneaten because the lion was not
hungry at that moment. It does not mean, however, that lions are insidious and
evil creatures that need to be eradicated from Earth like a vermin. Their
instincts to hunt and to eat function separately; when they see a running
animal, they will attempt to hunt it, they can't help it; their instinct to
hunt is often triggered by the rapid movement of potential prey. Besides,
nothing in nature goes to waste, and possible „carnage“ of antelopes they would
leave behind will be a welcome food for jackals and hyenas.
Imagine that a human would
behave this way. After all, he is „only“ an animal too and is following his
hunting instinct, so he goes trigger happy and ten antelopes are down right
away. Such
behavior would be condemned by society as despicable and wrong.
Unlike an animal, a human can help it; as a spiritual being, he
can judge and reflect, and consciously decide. Any enslavement to the instinct
is painfully unworthy of a beautiful spiritual creature as a human being and
below his level.
It is also important to add that
free will and self-awareness are not attributes of high intelligence. There are
many amazingly intelligent animals (elephants, monkeys, dolphins) and the
ability of self-realizing and judging will not appear out of nowhere when the
animal reaches a certain level of intelligence (no matter what the movies about
Planet of the Apes tell us). It is truly a sign exclusively spiritual that is or is not in living
being from the beginning.
Another crucial
feature of spiritual being is the ability
to create. This ability goes far beyond the normal framework of
understanding creativity. Creativity in art, or inventiveness in the field of
science is only a small part of it. It means to understand that human
constantly influences his surroundings, his behavior, and his body with his
spirit at any given moment, whether he realizes it or not. Just as long-term
stress can cause chronic abdominal pain, the spirit affects his body in a much
broader sense. The spirit creates the
body.
To this day, it is a mystery to
science why at a certain stage of development a certain species of apes
„suddenly“ descended from trees, and gradually adapted relatively
disadvantageous evolutionary elements such as the disappearance of hair (very
impractical in cold weather), straightened up posture (movement on two legs
instead of four slowed them down considerably - both when hunting and when
escaping, and also made them much more visible), etc. They also began to use
tools and to create. Could this not simply mean that when the apes reached the
highest stage of body development, human spiritual sparks longing for evolution
were incarnated to the bodies of apes for the first time instead of animal
souls? That is why the "apes" began to behave differently, thus
gradually influencing the development of the body, which further elevated its
appearance and functionality. Many of the mysteries of our evolution would be
explained very easily this way. The concept of spirituality should be
officially accepted by science because it has directly affected our evolution, and on a daily basis affects our
biology and even the level of our
intelligence.
So, in fact, we didn't evolve from apes.
We just borrowed their coat, and gradually re-sewed and remodeled it. They are
not our ancestors; if we give someone a coat, that's not gonna make relatives
out of us...
We look for identity on the outside,
instead of going deep within. We ask our intellect who we are, but can it
answer us? Our brain, in all its amazingness, is a computer that only processes
the information we fed it before. We feed it mainly through teaching,
observation, and experiments, and we try to draw some conclusions from that,
but such knowledge will always be fragmentary and incomplete. It cannot give us
anything new. Only the spirit can do that. Spirit is able to create and receive
inspiration, is capable of overview and complex perspective because it does not
come from matter, unlike the brain (and intellect connected to it). Therefore,
all of the art that is truly beautiful, but also all the new scientific
discoveries, come from the spirit and its inspiration.
Let us not fall into the trap of
false modesty when we say that we are "only" intelligent animals
because the term "crown of creation" sounds so haughty, doesn't it? As
if we were superior to animals. We also share
the planet with animals, and not rule it destructively.
But
false modesty will not benefit us, neither the planet nor the animals around us,
it will have no positive environmental effects. Quite the contrary. By claiming
to be animals, we are descending, we are narrowing our potential to a minimum,
and we are essentially seeking excuses for the lowest that is within us to
silence our conscience once and for all. As a result, we descend and burden
ourselves even more. It means our own destruction. We will not stand properly
in creation, we will not fulfill our function, we will not elevate it and take care
of it correctly. We will diminish, tie our own wings, and return to all fours. We
will become useless in creation. And we know what evolution does with
everything that is useless...
Let
us also not fall into the trap of pride. Being spiritual does not mean being
superior, it does not mean that animals are not "good enough" or that
we can do whatever we want with them; it means we are of a different kind. Animals
are not of a spiritual kind, they have only an animal soul, therefore they can
express emotions such as anger or joy; they can even have unique personality
traits – that originates from the soul (humans also possess a soul), but
nothing more.
Humans
stand hierarchically above animals, but that only means all the more
responsibility; a responsibility that comes with that wonderful, wondrous gift
of free will. Our "burden" of free will, and conscious decisions we
can direct in a certain way, means responsibility for the whole of creation
animals don't even dream of. A responsibility we cannot escape. Cunning and
making excuses won't help. Responsibility of nations and individuals. We are
called masters of creation because our ability to create has the potential to
elevate this creation to unknown possibilities; something that instinct-based animals
cannot do.
Let
us be who we are - spiritual beings; it is the answer to all the questions and
problems of our lives. If
we deem ourselves to be animals, we are actually descending below the status of
animals, because, unlike us, they are 100% what they should be.
A
human being is NOT an animal. May it be written into our souls forever.
© Ludmila
