Humans have long considered themselves to be the crown of creation, the ultimate development of evolution. We stand in a different relation to Earth and its creatures than any other life form.
Thinking beings, we contemplate our actions, measuring them against memory and imagination. In a real sense we are masters of time. Our actions occur in present time, our memories in past time, and our imagination may occur in future time. We have left behind our animal instincts and taken control of our reactions. Living in a self-awareness that over-rides our biological background, we desire, we dream, and we create. We hold the timing of life and death in our hands, as if we were gods.
We see no other creature with conscious control of its instinctual nature, so we claim the top rung on the ladder of life.
A life-form higher than ours?
Somewhere in us is a discomfort with this self-image, if we are thinking people. We see the harsh reality of our behaviour with one another and toward the world around us. We find ourselves, our fellow humans, acting in brutal and plainly stupid ways despite knowing better. We allow our personal pains to grow into monstrous angers, and we attack the hearts of great cities. We know we are poisoning parts of the Earth in ways that will be unmitigated for thousands of years. And we are eradicating entire species at a rate we cannot fully calculate.
We stare with deep dismay at what we do, yet seem incapable of stopping ourselves. Good men and women around the world, in every community, call out for sensible care and gentle regard for people, for children, and for the natural world, but are in many ways trapped by the very systems we have created to improve our lives.
When we take time to reflect on these things, we come to the inevitable conclusion that we are the best and the worst of all living things.
When this disturbing truth sits heavy in our hearts we may find ourselves looking out over the open sea. The waves calm us with the regularity of their sounds and flowing forms. Letting go, we gaze into distances that sweep our minds clean. We open to the immensity and resilience of the world, larger than human failings. As the waves curl and splash, we may recall that the oceans are three times larger than all the lands put together. And there, among the waves, lives a kind of creature who offers answers, gifts of quiet mystery, for our troubled souls.
The cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises) top the hierarchy of the oceans. In the wet world nothing comes close to the combination of qualities they possess.
In the last two hundred years, our knowledge of these mighty animals has grown. The last fifty years have seen our understanding increase exponentially. And at the window of every new discovery, we stand amazed.
Ancient gods
In the distant past, humanity saw the dolphins as magical and unfathomable creatures who stirred new thoughts, new sensitivities, and even new relations with God. A deep resonance was felt between human aspirations and dolphin and whale lore. They were revered, treated as god-like beings who, after appearing for a moment along a shore or playing in the bow wave of a boat, would dive into another world, disappearing into the mysterious underwater realms.
Where myths meet history, we discover that many early cultural advances were attributed to contact with these odd ‘people' in the sea.
The ‘gifts’ received from the sea seemed to be from a dream, the land of myths, the ‘collective unconscious.’ Many early teachings about mastering the ways of the world are said to have been passed on by large beings from the sea who originated in the stars, teachers who stimulated humans to rise above the animals.
Some of the ancient tales are clearly psychological remnants of the shock of seeing self-awareness in another life form. And some contain internal evidence of more mysterious origins.
We have always found lessons in our relations with whales and dolphins, mirroring the current stage of human development. The Greeks found guidance and legal precedents in dolphin interaction, setting up courts of law based in temples devoted to the Dolphin God. The Romans told stories of platonic love between dolphins and young men. In early England, the tales of Merdhinn, or Merlin as we have come to know him, told of a magical journey under the sea, where wise creatures taught him his mystic arts, enabling him to aid the coming of a perfect King. In France the next in line for the king's role, the anticipated new God-King, was called Le Dauphin (the Dolphin).
Animism, shamanism, Goddess worship, patriarchal churches, beliefs in impersonal or personal gods, and even the agnostic systems of science itself have all received revelations from dolphins. Odd, almost amphibious beings, with minds that both receive our thoughts and send us unequivocal messages, they have been central to many of our deepest discoveries.
Images and ideas associated with dolphins played a part in the early Christian church. These often were abstract ideas, such as salvation, redemption, overcoming fears of the unknown, and teachings about grace, about the beauty of the human soul as it finds its way across the depths of time.
Later, whales came to be part of the human drama too. Huge and doubly mysterious, they daunted mankind for centuries, great God-like monsters of the dangerous deeps.
Forgotten
In modern times, with religions too tired and limited to be very helpful in understanding our world and our lives, and science too cold-blooded to solve our moral challenges, we seek yet another source of inspiration, one that can lead us to a unified form of belief. We want a way to live life that embodies a universal code of virtue (the guidance that religion used to offer) and that learns and grows from experience (what science has given us, an adaptability to change). We want a living path, a way through life that offers timeless values and playful discovery.
Friends, teachers, guides
And then, as if by magic, some of us begin to suspect that the ‘ocean people' have learned to live this way, that they are inside the ‘sacred hoop' of life and are self-aware participants in the world around them. Their images surround us, and we feel a great lift of inexplicable joy when they appear in the flesh. We find ourselves turning to the dolphins and whales again for inspiration.
Those of us who have managed to survive the disparagement of our peers, parents, and cultures to maintain a mystical worldview while remaining in the ‘regular' world with all its advantages of technology – in other words, those of us who have already begun the move into a unitary state – find dolphins and whales to be delightful companions. We have come to see them as friends, teachers, guides and examples. They delight our sense of play, they deepen our meditations, and they light our sense of holiness. When we are able to relinquish control, we are led into profound realizations about the transcendent realms, or are made to confront the hard truths of our own wishful thinking.
We watch them play, we play with them, then we come home and reflect on what we experienced. Often enough, we are challenged. And on that rare day when everything seems destined to be perfect, we look into the eye of another creature who is as bemused by it all as we wish we were. We receive a brief flash of communion, of unified thought and feeling, and we escape the bounds of our regular life. The experience of that first penetrating look into the eye of a dolphin or a whale creates an explosive expansion inside the human mind. One feels that a portal has just opened up in space and time.
A pathway that leads to another being, one who understands...
Not every moment with dolphins is like this; in fact, most are not. Despite the wishful fantasies of many, simply being in the water beside a dolphin does not guarantee a mind-blowing experience. It takes time, special preparation, and a unique set of circumstances.
And when it happens, it changes everything.
For some, it verifies what has been theoretical. For some, it opens new vistas never contemplated before. For some, it startles all preconceptions so profoundly that everything suddenly comes up for questioning. And for some, there is redemption, a new beginning. Occasionally, one is baptized, washed clean by the acceptance of a kind and alien eye.
Traditionally, these experiences are called mystical or shamanic journeys into another world. Can science explain these phenomena? I should hope so. When science develops the ability to measure and analyse the substance of thought and can explain the dimensions of fun, it will all be made clear.
I have met quite a few dolphins, both in the wild and in human-managed situations. Some have decided to spend some special time with me. Some have even ‘spoken’ to me. Several have allowed me to carry on conversations with them. Those of us who have managed this feat, and kept our wits about us, are challenged by this awkward situation. We have heard voices in our heads that weren't our own. We have been shown images of things, felt radical changes in our bodies, seen vistas of otherworldly realms, and have been told histories that do not exist in any book. More real than any television program, these experiences are something we are certain of, yet we are often challenged by others as to the truthfulness of our tales. The best answer to these questions is to spend time among dolphins.
Who are the Dolphins and Whales? If a friend is someone who knows everything about you, and likes you anyway, then the answer is simple: They are our best friends.
From Souls in the Sea copyright 2003 by Scott Taylor, published in the USA by Frog Ltd.
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