The physical body can be thought of as old clothing that we take off and leave behind as our spirit walks through death’s doorway. When our spirit reaches the other side of the doorway, it’s alive, conscious, and ready for a different kind of life. As one orange tabby cat put it, “Death is really no big deal. But sometimes we get very attached to our clothing.”
—Jacquelin Smith, author of Animal Communication: Our Sacred Connection
SPIRITUAL NATURE
In my experience communicating with thousands of animals throughout my life, and since I began counseling work as an animal communication specialist in 1971, I find that animals of all kinds are like humans—individual, conscious, spiritual beings who animate physical form. They have intelligence, mental capacities, feelings, and sensitivity—often far exceeding human awareness or expectations—that is well-suited for their purposes and functioning in the natural order of life on Earth. Communicating with animals who are “in spirit” is similar to communicating with animals who are “in body” because animals are aware of their continuous existence beyond death.
Unlike many humans in our western culture, most nonhuman animals have a sense of their spiritual nature and recognize that their physical bodies are but temporary homes. This awareness gives them an acceptance of life and death as a natural and ever-flowing cycle. While they may grieve the loss of a loved one as humans do and may not wish to leave their bodies at certain times or under certain conditions, they are not socially conditioned by members of their own species to think of physical death as a horrible end or something to dread. They know that death is a transition to another state of being, like a change of costume in a play or a different way of being alive. They generally grieve their loved ones and move with the flow of life as it presents itself in each moment.
The following is an illustration of how animals feel and demonstrate the loss of their loved ones (from spring 2005 “Trunklines,” a publication of The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee [www.elephants.com]).
Keeper records noted that on the night before [ailing Asian elephant] Lota’s death, the elephants in the main barn, which is adjacent to the quarantined barn, engaged in a group ritual that had never before been documented. All of the elephants were inside the barn with outside access if they desired. Without any obvious provocation Jenny and Shirley began to roar. Simultaneously, all of the elephants lent their voices to the chorus, which built in volume and vibration until it became deafening. From one end of the barn to the other, the walls shook and the air quaked as the elephants’ bellows increased to a deafening level. This display lasted for six full minutes. Each time the volume began to wane, it would then suddenly begin to build again, resembling a mass wailing display of grief.
The elephants’ physical behavior throughout was curious. They all remained fairly still, standing in place yet exploding with the most profoundly emotional verbal display imaginable. As abruptly as the display began, it ended with only residual signs and guttural rumbles as the entire herd returned to its usual routine of napping, eating, and interacting.
DEATH AS PART OF LIFE
Humans in tribal societies—who live close to nature and revere the earth and its cycles—usually accept death, like birth, as part of the whole. They are aware that they continue as spirits and that there are spiritual realms or dimensions beyond the physical plane. Death is not dreaded but is often welcomed as a healthy change or even a joyous occasion to join their ancestors or dwell with the gods or spirits in other dimensions. Without this awareness and sense of the spiritual nature of animals, including ourselves, people can feel lost or experience their animal friends’ departures with devastating hopelessness. A more positive emotional experience is possible when we can relish a tender continuance of connection with our animal friends.
Animals who have had a full, rich life with humans appreciate being able to share the joys and trials of their lives with us, even when they know their body is failing. Animal communicator Joanna Seere tells how she assisted in the departure of Tuskers, a twenty-six-year-old quarter horse who came to the horse sanctuary where she was teaching:
Tuskers and his best friend, Jimmy, a big thoroughbred, shared a pasture together at a beautiful horse sanctuary that I used to visit. Tuskers had come to the sanctuary to retire. One day, Tuskers was struck suddenly by terrible pain. He asked me to get help for him from the vet. Tuskers communicated to me that he felt that he had a long, good life even though it was a hard one. He said that his body felt very weak and frail and the pain in his gut was taking his breath away. The vet tried everything he could, but Tuskers’ belly kept swelling and his pain kept increasing.
Tuskers asked to be released from his body. He said goodbye to his friend Jimmy as they sniffed each other for the last time. When the vet administered the injection, Tusker’s spirit lifted out of his body long before the injection was finished. Jimmy gave a whinny of goodbye, turned his back on Tusker’s body, and began to graze.
In the middle of the night, I was awakened by the sound of a horse galloping on the paved driveway by the farmhouse and down the street. All of the horses at the sanctuary were whinnying and racing back and forth at the fence lines of their paddocks. We all ran out of the farmhouse looking for the horse who had somehow gotten out of the field. There was no horse to be found in the driveway or on the road. All the horses were in their fields and the fence lines were intact. In a moment it became clear to me that it was Tuskers giving his final victory gallop around the farm!
For people who cultivate knowledge of and communication with spiritual dimensions beyond the physical senses, death is a change in state or viewpoint. For those who think of themselves as only their physical form, death becomes an annulment of being, an end of participation in life, and something to be avoided for as long as possible. We can learn from other species to accept death as a part of and a continuance of life.
Practicing the principles and techniques of animal communication can help you stretch into the experience of listening to animals, experiencing their feelings, and engaging in a dialogue that keeps you actively connected with your animal friends throughout the process of dying, death, and beyond. Instead of being a puzzled or devastated onlooker, you can enter into a state of spiritual communion with your animal companion that uplifts and enlightens your life.
SURVIVAL INSTINCTS
All animals, including humans, have an innate instinct or deep desire to survive and avoid dangers that could lead to injury or death. However, fearful contemplation of death is usually alien to animals in a natural setting. Wild animals often go off by themselves to die, to be taken by a predator or the elements. They do this to avoid attracting predators, who might endanger the survival of the other pack members. Healthy members of the group may also abandon or drive out an animal who is ill or injured, and not getting better, in order to protect the rest of the group from predators. This pattern remains in some domesticated animals. I have seen groups of dogs, and also chickens, attack and try to push away or kill those who are injured. While they have no predators to worry about in domesticity, the sense of danger causes them to act on these primal instincts.
Most individual domestic animals do not react in this way. Besides the innate group survival patterns, they also have the security of human protection. Many human actions are likewise motivated by hormonal, emotional, or survival promptings. In our dealings with animals of any type, including other humans, we can reason with them but always have to consider the other influences or patterns that are part of their makeup.
There is an understanding about survival needs in the natural order, and most deaths among nonhuman animals are swift and relatively painless. Wild animals are geared to leave their physical bodies when they are first caught. They do not usually experience much pain or emotional trauma in their natural, agreed-upon predator/prey relationships, and they often immediately seek another body of the same species to begin their lives anew.
Being a prey animal may not be an easy life, but it’s not accompanied by the horror of the torturous, confusing, and fear-filled preludes to slaughter that are common with the current human methods of killing animals in factory farming or laboratory experiments.
Once, in his many runs through field and forest, I saw my Afghan hound, Pasha, catch a squirrel. Pasha backed up and told the squirrel, “Run, run,” but the squirrel was frozen in fear, the spirit having left its body because he believed he was about to die. When the squirrel realized that his body was still alive and whole, he came out of shock, returned to his body, and ran toward a tree, bringing Pasha the joy of the chase he wanted.
EVERYONE IS EATEN
When I was teaching communication with animals in Switzerland, I received an important insight from a rabbit about the nature of death of all animals, including humans. Our group was practicing communication exercises on a dairy farm, which also had a barn full of horses in stalls and many rabbit hutches.
I was standing next to a large rabbit hutch, admiring the beauty of the gold-colored rabbit inside and how comfortable she looked in her ample bed of hay. I assumed the rabbits here were companion rabbits when I first saw the large wood hutches that housed them. Then I realized by the number of hutches and placement in the barn that these rabbits were being raised for meat. I was uncomfortable with the idea that these beautiful rabbits were going to be killed for human consumption. I decided to ask the rabbit across from me how she felt about her situation.
She looked at me and commented directly: “I have a good life here. I have good company with other rabbits nearby [and the] horses, birds, cows, humans, and other animals who visit the barn. I’m fed well and given plenty of fresh hay for a nice comfortable bed. The sun shines on me, and I get to look across the fields at the cows and sky. I am connected to my wild rabbit cousins and know what a hard life they have compared to me, always having to be wary for predators about to pounce. I am happy with my life, and I am treated well until my death.”
I asked the rabbit how she felt about being raised to be eaten by humans. What she answered took me by surprise.
“We all get eaten,” she said. “The horses here, the cows, even you. Everyone is eaten.”
I was puzzled by her answer and told her, “My body will not get eaten by anyone. I will not be slaughtered for food as you and the other animals are.”
To this she answered, “Oh yes you will. Everyone is eaten. What matters is that you enjoy your life until your death.”
Then I realized what she meant. In the end, all bodies are food to nurture other species or forms of life in the great recycling center of Earth. We are all part of the web of life, which includes death and decay. Our bodies return to the Earth. My body will be eaten by worms and other small creatures, and decompose in the soil or be burned into ash that gets utilized by others for the continuance of life. None of us are exempt from being eaten or recycled through other bodies into other forms of life. As this wonderful rabbit teacher had told me, “What matters is that you enjoy your life until your death.”