Disputes about whether animals have an immortal soul (not just mental activity) have been going on for more than one hundred years. More precisely, many do not even argue on this topic, being sure that only a person has a soul. The rest of the living creatures are unreasonable creatures, and therefore soulless. But is it?
The first thing that makes you wonder is the telepathic abilities of animals. They in some mysterious way perceive the thoughts of a person and predict his intentions. The second is the appearance of ghosts of animals after their death. Most often, however, people do not see, but only feel them. Sometimes a person feels like a cat is rubbing against his legs, although it has long been gone.
Quite often, the owners hear the familiar barking or meowing at night, although the person understands that this cannot be. Psychologists say that all such phenomena can be explained very simply: the pain of loss provokes hallucinations. The proof is that over time, all these phenomena stop. This means that the owners have already calmed down, resigned themselves to the loss …
But maybe the point here is completely different?
In Scotland, in a mansion called Bollechin House, a rather strange story happened. An army major, the owner of the estate, in his will expressed a desire to return from the other world in the body of one of his dogs. After the death of the major, after reading this will, the family was horrified, and his dogs were simply shot. The major was buried next to his late wife. This is where it all started. People coming to the graves began to hear dull thumps coming from the ground, some strange sounds and even the noise of a quarrel.
The major had a nephew, whose wife, once entering the office of the deceased, smelled a sharp doggy smell. Moreover, she even felt that an invisible dog was poking her legs. Other people in the house experienced similar sensations. The servants, frightened by what was happening, categorically refused to stay in the building and every one of them quit. The mysterious events continued for over two decades.
At the so-called Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond (Virginia, USA), at the grave of the writer Ellen Glasgow, strange things still happen today. People have no doubt that the ghosts of her dogs appear here. When Ellen died, it turned out that in her will she expressed a rather unusual wish - that the corpses of her two dogs, who had died before the mistress and were buried in the backyard of the house, should be exhumed and buried next to her in the cemetery. The will of the deceased was fulfilled. And many people after that heard the barking of dogs around the grave, and some even saw the ghostly silhouettes of animals.
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Dale Kazhmarek of the Ghost Research Society says that most of these reports are about dogs, cats, and horses. In this sequence. From this he concludes that only intelligent animals can make "visits" from the other world. “As far as I know, there are no reports of phantoms of mosquitoes, flies and the like,” he writes.
Perhaps only thinking species have a soul? These and other similar questions remain unanswered. After all, man is, perhaps, the only biological species that realizes that sooner or later he will die and leave this world. All other species live today and die, being unable to notify us of the fact of their impending death.
Moreover, even among people, the scenario of the appearance of ghosts is usually associated with an untimely death, often tragic, when a person has no idea that his life will now end. Maybe the same is true for animals?
Many things connect us with animals, and sometimes they even resemble us in some way.
Recently, the University of Oregon conducted research on what a person can say about his pet. And an interesting relationship emerged. The owner of a dog is usually a responsible, obliging person, he believes in justice and the higher order of things. A cat lover is often as much a loner at heart and “walks on his own” like his purr. And those who start an aquarium are less pessimistic and cynical than many others. But in most cases, pets are distinguished by loyalty and loyalty, which few of us are capable of.
There are many stories about how the ghost of an animal rescues its owners by giving them an "alarm signal" from the other world. So, in Wichita (Kansas), Mrs. Lovanda Cady once woke up from the barking of her dog, already buried by that time. And this saved her from the thief who was operating in the apartment at that moment.
In New York, Norma Kresgal was similarly awakened by a collie named Corky, whom she had long mourned. Mrs. Kresgal got up to see what happened and found the house on fire.
Walter Manuel from Los Angeles once jumped up in the middle of the night in horror - his dog, a terrier named Lady, was just barking. Walter heard this barking in his dream. Alarmed, he rushed to the bedroom window and saw that his two-year-old son somehow got out of the house and fell into the garden pool. Walter rushed to the pool and managed to save the baby. The most incredible thing here is that Lady was buried three weeks ago.
It happens that ghosts of animals constantly appear in the same place. In the wooded southern suburbs of Chicago, there is one perilous crossroads where many tragedies have occurred. The drivers overcome the rise, but at the very top in front of them a horse or even a rider on a horse suddenly rises.
The driver brakes sharply, but … there is no one on the road. There is a popular belief that ghosts protect this section of the road, protecting drivers from new accidents. The fact is that many horses from the nearby stables died here.
But is there any documentary evidence that animals can appear in the form of ghosts?
It turns out there is. And not only modern ones.
Back in 1916, in Buckinghamshire, pensioner Arthur Springer took a photograph of a decapitated dog after development. When Mr. Springer was filming an idyllic home scene, he did not see any dogs, let alone beheaded.
In Switzerland in 1925 one family was photographed. A boy was put in the foreground, holding a rabbit.
When the film was developed, it turned out that not only a rabbit, but also a kitten, or rather his head, was sitting in the boy's arms. Family members identified him as the same kitten that lived in their house, but a few weeks before the family decided to take a picture, he died.
Lady Ehir and her Irish wolfhound Tara were photographed in 1926. From behind the wolfhound's back you can see the head of a puppy.
It turned out that it belonged to Lady Ehir, but inadvertently jumped out onto the road and was hit by a car. During his lifetime, he was inseparable from the wolfhound.
Nowadays, especially with the development of digital imaging technologies, the possibilities for fabricating phantom photographs have increased enormously.
There were a lot of such pictures. Be that as it may, today few people believe that the life of animals can continue after physical death. Meanwhile, many enlighteners of the past, including Christians, did not doubt this.
Today's skeptics from among believers often refer to the Bible: there, they say, there is no mention of the immortal soul of animals or their afterlife, which means that this is the prerogative of only one creature on the planet - man. And if so, then animals are creatures of a lower order, with which you can treat as you like, without fear of burdening your soul with sins. After all, this is precisely why there are disputes today about whether it is sinful or not to shoot stray dogs, to drown "extra" kittens.
However, let's try to think more broadly: is it logical to recognize the right to the existence of an immortal soul for only one type of biological life?
You and I are only one of about 200 species of primates, but at the same time we always try to emphasize (just not to talk about biological similarity!) That man is "a social being with consciousness, reason."
We are very proud of our intelligence! If the mind is found by other animals, then we are surprised and moved. But in vain. There are many examples proving that the head works great in animals too.
In December 1991, Jack Fife, a 75-year-old resident of Sydney, Australia, suffered a stroke and was paralyzed. Apart from him, there were no people in the house, and for nine days the life of Mr. Fife was saved by the collie Tixie, who moistened a towel and put it on the owner's face so that he could absorb moisture and did not die of thirst.
First Tiksi moistened a towel in her bowl, but all the water immediately absorbed into the fabric, the bowl was empty, and the dog began to wet it in the toilet.
All nine days Tiksi did not leave the owner anywhere, only ran away to wet the towel once again, as soon as the patient whispered: "Water". This continued until the daughter of Mr. Fife appeared in the house: she was alarmed why her father had not come to a traditional family dinner. During this time, the patient became terribly thin, but survived! From these details, one can also conclude that Mr. Fife did not have a telephone, and the toilet was leaking.
Here's another example. In October 1993, François Colombier, his son and his friend were riding on a three-meter pleasure motor boat when a fierce storm suddenly hit. It happened off the coast of France, near the Brittany peninsula, and in the Bay of Biscay it storms often and thoroughly. The fuel was running low, the outboard motor flooded, and he began to "sneeze".
Giant waves drove the uncontrollable boat straight onto the rocks. It seemed that there was nothing to hope for. And then, out of nowhere, four dolphins appeared. Two of them swam to the stern and began to push the boat from behind, the other two were located on the left and right along the side. For half an hour, they smoothly escorted the boat to the shore, and only when the people were completely safe did they turn around and rush back to sea.
One of our typical and eternal counterarguments is speech that is supposedly inherent only in humans. But Doctor of Biological Sciences A. P. Dubrov gives a lot of cases when different animals learned the human language. And how many people understand our smaller brothers? Some clairvoyants claim to be able to understand the language of animals, communicate with them telepathically and translate their "speech" into our language.
And if most of us are not given this, then it is not at all because animals are stupid: we are imperfect! In the end, a newborn baby does not speak any language either, but a believer would not dare to assert that a child has no soul on this basis alone.
In the same way, there is no reason to deprive the deaf-dumb of the right to possession of the soul, although they, too, cannot express their thoughts aloud. And only animals fall into the "caste" of the soulless.
Now let's look at the problem through the eyes of a geneticist. If we compare a person with, say, the same monkeys, then even from ordinary chimpanzees we are distinguished by only 1.6% of our DNA. So is this enough to believe that it is precisely a tiny percentage of genetic differences that gives us the right to the immortality of the soul, and reduces animals to the pitiful fate of "second-rate" creatures? Agree, this is unlikely and not very logical.
Some say that a person is distinguished from all other living creatures by the ability to think abstractly, to produce "general ideas." But back in 1710, the English bishop of Berkeley wrote that many people completely lack this ability. However, this does not mean that we will deny them the right to be called human!
Today we can add to this that in recent experiments their ability to think abstractly was proved, for example, by the same dolphins, while some of our fellow tribesmen turned out to be surprisingly primitive and difficult to train.
It is curious that when the parapsychologist D. Scott Rogo wrote about experiments with the exit of the astral body from the physical (which often happens in cases of clinical death), he mentioned a wide variety of animals that a person sees "there", penetrating beyond the limits of earthly existence. And yet, few have paid attention to this detail: a person is too egocentric to ask "useless" questions.
Those who have had a chance to communicate with the other world through mediums or clairvoyants have no doubt that the soul of the animal continues to exist after the end of earthly life - either as a separate spirit or as part of a “collective soul”. And some people, after coming out of clinical death, claim that they saw "there" their pets, who had been buried long ago.
Examples of this kind are known, in particular, thanks to the famous Polish medium Franek Kluski. Sylvia Barbanell says the same thing in her book When Your Animal Dies, and our professor Pavlovsky said that some nurses at the patient's bedside allegedly observed the materialization of animals that the dying person once adored. In some cases, the phenomenon was even photographed.
Apparently, only convinced skeptics believe in the possibility of the posthumous life of the soul only for itself (however, people with a scientific type of thinking deny this too). But even if they recognize such a possibility for some animals, they will certainly ask the question: how far down the ladder of evolution can the ability of a living to have a soul extend? Really down to the lowest forms? However, this does not so much concern the one who considers himself the crown of creation. What's the difference what's down there?
However, let us return to the Bible, which allegedly does not say anything about the soul of animals. Even if this were so, we should not discount one simple truth: firstly, the Bible was written (and, by the way, many times rewritten in a new way, “edited”) by people, and these people in those ancient harsh times only they were interested in the first place.
How to survive? How not to anger God? Everything else seemed to them then secondary and not deserving special attention. Man created religious rituals again in order to gain the favor and favor of the Creator - for himself. Animals were not included in this category. That is why the fate of animals was by no means a subject of speculation or discussion.
Secondly, there is still an interesting passage in the Bible where the soul of animals is mentioned - in Ecclesiastes:
"Who knows: does the spirit of the sons of men go up, and the spirit of animals descend into the earth?" (Eccl. 3:21).
Where do people get such confidence, even if there is a question mark in the Bible? In the book of Genesis there are also several places where this question is practically removed. Even about fish, birds, creeping things and beasts of the earth, it always says that God created "a living soul after its kind" (Gen. 1: 20-29).
But how can we explain the very phenomenon of the appearance of animal ghosts?
There are several different hypotheses.
One of them is as follows. Strong sadness for a lost loved one, constant thoughts about him create an image of an animal in the human brain. In other words, a person's obsessions "materialize" at the expense of his own energy, so he inspires himself that he sees a phantom he has created.
Neurophysiologist from Canada Michael Persinger believes that the phenomenon of phantoms is most often associated with periods of magnetic storms, with high geomagnetic activity. And the scientist checked it. He put the volunteers in an isolated room and from time to time passed a magnetic field through the temporal lobes of their brain, and the subjects did not know when it was turned on. It turned out that when the magnetic field was turned on, people often saw something in the dark that resembled a human figure.
Or else: our extrasensory perception is sharpened at the moment of extreme danger, which a person has already telepathically sensed at a subconscious level, but does not perceive with his mind. It is here that the body opens up hidden reserves, making it possible to see what we do not see in the normal state. Including a phantom animal.
Well, if we take into account the arguments mentioned here, as well as numerous evidences that the souls of animals also do not disappear without a trace, then a believer can have no doubt that in his next life he will be accompanied by devoted creatures that make up an integral part of the present life.
And in conclusion - a story told by an inhabitant of North Island, one of the two largest islands in New Zealand. This man's name is James Bean.
When Jim was still a schoolboy, he loved to track deer in the nearest forest, and later became a hunter, moreover, a real professional. He shot animals deftly and skillfully, not at all thinking that it was a murder. In other words, he developed a "deafness" to the pain he caused.
And then one day, on a mountain peak, he shot a female deer. She stumbled and rolled down into the thick bush. Going down there, Jim found that the wound was fatal, but the deer was still alive.
According to him, the animal watched as he approached. It seemed to him that the wounded animal was asking: why did he do it, what was he thinking then? It was a supernatural, eerie sensation.
Meanwhile, the animal was dying. And it continued to reproach the person in silence. So an adult reprimands a fool who has committed an irreparable stupidity. This caused such a deep shock to the hunter that by evening he fell ill.
Jim felt a terrible shame and his complete insignificance. He had to agree with the validity of the doubts this animal had about his mind.
Needless to say, after that Jim quit the forestry, gave up hunting and moved to the city. But he continued to be tormented by nightmares, in which he again and again shot at the deer, and when he approached her to finish off, she turned to someone close to her every time - either a teacher, then a wife, or Jim himself. when he was a child. And every time the former hunter woke up in a cold sweat …
“Over the years, I've come to love life in all its forms,” says Jim. - I am very sorry that sometime in my youth I chose the profession of a hunter. Today there are many animals and plants around my dwelling, but the lesson of respect for all living things that I received from the deer then does not allow me to interfere with my life in any way. I can't even cut the branches off the trees!"
In recent years, Jim has been working with wild dolphins and doing everything possible to keep their habitat intact. He discovered that true harmony exists only in Nature, and to be a part of it, its partner is much better than its enemy.
It is curious that back in 1934, at a seminar in Basel, the famous psychologist Carl Jung made a very instructive statement, which would not hurt to remember today. He said that animals do the will of the Lord more faithfully than people: they live as intended by the Creator. We don't do that. We shamelessly interfere with the creation of God. And the animal remains itself, it will always be true to what nature has in it …