Four legged soul mates

Science today is confirming what many of us have long known. The relationship between animals and humans is psychic…mystical…and breath taking.  Two major articles in the “Science” section of the New York Times on this subject are mind boggling.

The psychic connection, brought about by love, between animals and humans, the human animal, was perhaps the most popular of all of my Palm Springs radio shows. The switchboard would light up like a Christmas tree and the stories that poured in were overwhelming.

I quote for you one paragraph from the New York Times article. “Don’t worry about cardiovascular workouts, eating oak bran, or taking an Aspirin. To live longer and heal faster, to lower blood pressure and cholesterol and have a far better chance of surviving a heart attack…..GET A DOG. Dogs should be making house calls and making the rounds of the wards.”

I thought immediately of my mother. She was in an excellent nursing home in McCall, Idaho.  My wife and I visited often.  A miracle started happening in that home.  They made the decision to allow dogs in the home and many of the rooms. My mother said that it was beautiful what happened.  The home was filled with laughter….with joy…..smiles…love and affection.

A very dear friend of mine, and my wife, was Dr. Charles Flowers, M.D. who was the Dean of the Medical School at the University of Alabama. My wife and I stayed in his home when I gave the “Jung Lectures” at the Medical School.  He told me about his Boxer coming back after death to tell the family good-bye. Even his neighbors witnessed this event and gave confirmation. Now, Dr. Flowers was no flake. He was Dean of the Medical School. His medical books are used by Medical Schools all over America.  He and this Boxer had a “soul mate” bonding. The dog had died while Dr. Flowers was on a lecturing trip. He cried when he told me how crushed he was that he was not there to tell the dog good-bye. I do not have enough space in this column to list all of the events that happened that confirmed the presence of the spirit of that dog.

That giant scholar, Dr. Albert Schweitzer, M.D. had a Doctorate in Music as well as a Doctorate in Philosophy  and another in Theology. He often wrote about talking to all of the animals around his African hospital. He wrote that “if all animals do not live on after death in other dimensions, then humans will not either. For the soul of all animals is just as sacred as the human soul, which is also an animal soul, since humans are also animals.”  He wrote, “A human is ethical ONLY when he considers every living cell, plant or animal, sacred and divine.”

I read a remarkable book about a dog and an artist several years ago. The title was “Picasso and Lump, a Dachshund’s Odyssey” by that dazzling photographer David Douglas Duncan, who was almost a member of the Picasso family and the only photographer who was ever allowed to take pictures at will.  Picasso had a total, soul mate, psychic connection to this little dog that he had with no other animal. He allowed Lump to eat from his dinner plate at the family table. He often, during the day and night, held Lump tightly in his arms. Lump knocked over canvas paintings…spilled paint…and did the usual dog things. And Duncan wrote in his text that “Lump never heard the word ‘no’ in his entire life with Picasso.” Picasso and Lump both went on into other dimensions in 1973 and are buried side by side, next to each other.

Think of this and cry. Other than humans, no other animal runs torture experiments on other animals. There is a spiritual, protoplasmic relationship between all living organisms. Nobel Prize scientists are writing using that kind of language today. Of course, the American Indian has known that for thousands of years.

Mark Twain said it well: “Man is the only animal that blushes, or needs to.” Remember, the little chipmunk is of the same dust as we…drinks the same waters…breathes the same air…needs the same oxygen…is warmed by the same sun…and was created by the same First Source.

“A human is ethical ONLY when he considers every living cell, plant or animal, sacred and divine” wrote Schweitzer.

Billy Collins, the nation’s Poet Laureate from 2001 to 2003 reminds us:

“Dharma…
The way the dog trots out the front door every morning
without a hat or an umbrella…
Without any money or the keys to her doghouse…
Never fails to fill the saucer of my heart with milky admiration…
Who provides a finer example of a life without encumbrance…
Thoreau in his curtainless hut…with a single plate…or single spoon…”
Gandhi with his staff and holy diapers?????
So off she goes into the material world with nothing but her brown coat
and her modest blue collar, following only her wet nose.
What a model of self containment…
What a paragon of earthly detachment…
If only she were not so eager for a rub behind the ears…
So acrobatic in
her welcomes…
If only I were not her god.”