The Mother and Sri Aurobindo on cats and animals

Sri Aurobindo Talks About Animals

Life is Life - whether in a cat, or a dog or man. There is no difference there between a cat or a man. The idea of difference is a human conception for man's own advantage.

*Sri Aurobindo*

SRI AUROBINDO: People say animals can't think or reason. It is not at all true. *Their intelligence has evolved to act only within the narrow limits of life, according to their own needs. But they have latent faculties which have not been developed.*

Cats have a language of their own. They utter different kinds of mews for different purposes. For instance, when the mother cat mews in a particular tone and rhythm after leaving her kittens behind a box, the little ones understand that they are not to move from that place until she comes back and repeats that mew. It is through the tone and the rhythm through the tone and the rhythm that cats express themselves.

Even donkeys, which are supposed to be very stupid, are sometimes unusually clever. Once some horses and donkeys were confined together, with the gate shut, to see if they could get out. While the horses were helpless, a donkey got out by lifting idle latch and opening the gate.

*Why go so far? Even in our Ashram the Mother's cat Chikoo was extraordinarily clever. One day she was confined in a room. It was discovered that she was trying to open the window in exactly same way as the Mother used to do. Evidently Chikoo had watched the Mother carefully.*

We had a dog, a bitch left by somebody in the first house we rented. One day she was locked out. Finding it impossible to push the door open, she just sat in front of it and began to think, "How to get in?" The way she sat and the attitude of her head and eyes showed clearly that she was thinking. Then suddenly she got up, as saying to herself, "Ah, there is the bathroom door. Let me try it. And she went in that direction. The door was open and she got in.

*It is the Europeans who make a big difference between man and animal. The only difference is that animals can't form concepts and can't read or write or philosophise.*

NIRODBARAN: They can't do Yoga, either.

SRI AUROBINDO: I don't know about that. Once, while the Mother and I were meditating, a cat happened to be present. *We found that she was behaving oddly. She passed into a trance and was almost on the point of leaving her body and dying, when suddenly she recovered. Evidently she was trying to receive something.*

SATYENDRA: Ramana Maharshi's cow Lakshmi is said to bow down to him.. She is supposed to be someone connected with him in her past life who was attached to the Maharshi. This cow must be an exceptional one in South India. One can't really love Tamil cows: one gets so disgusted with their thin starved look and blank expression. And what a horrible practice it is to set the cow's milk flowing by putting a stuffed dummy calf in front of her, which she can't recognise as a fake one.

You say animals are intelligent, but this doesn't show it.

SRI AUROBINDO: *Not all men are intelligent either!*
(Talks with Sri Aurobindo, pp. 223-224)

23 March 1955

There are movements of certain vibrations which are vibrations of the species, you see, movements peculiar to the species to which you belong--there is the human species as there are all kinds. Now, some of these movements are not personal movements at all, they are movements of the species.

The human species has certain ways of being which are particular to it, which we reproduce almost automatically, as for example, walking upright, like this (gesture), whereas a cat goes on four feet, you see. This instinct of standing on one's two hind feet, upright, is peculiar to man, it is a movement that [new p. 97]belongs to the species; to sit as we do with the head up, you see, to lie [old p. 98]down as we do on the back...

You have only to watch animals: they lie down curled up, don't they? Almost all. It is with man that this way of lying on one's back, stretched out, begins, I think; I don't at all think that monkeys sleep like that, I think they sleep doubled up, that it is man who has started habits of this kind. And this reminds me...

I had a cat--in those days I used to sleep on the floor--which always came and slipped under the mosquito-net and slept beside me. Well, this cat slept quite straight, it did not sleep as cats do; it put its head here and then lay down like this (gesture), alongside my legs with its two forepaws like this, and its two little hind legs quite straight. And there was something very, very curious about it which I saw one night, like that. I used to ask myself why it was like this, and one night I saw a little Russian woman of the people with a fur bonnet and three little children, and this woman had a kind of adoration for her children and always wanted to look for a shelter for them; I don't know, I don't know the story, but I saw that she had her three little children, very small ones, with her... one like this, one like that, one like that (Mother shows the difference in height), and she was dragging them along with her and looking for a corner to put them in safety. Something must have happened to her, she must have died suddenly with a kind of very animal maternal instinct of a certain kind, but all full of fear--fear, anguish and worry--and this something must have come from there and in some way or other had reincarnated. It was a movement--it was not a person, you know, it was a movement which belonged to this person and must have come up in the cat. It was there for some reason or other, you see, I don't know how it happened, I know nothing about it, but this cat was completely human in its ways. And very soon afterwards it had three kittens, like that; and it was extraordinary, it didn't want to leave them, it refused to leave them, it was entirely... it did not eat, did not go [new p. 98]to satisfy its needs, it [old p. 99]was always with its young. When one day it had an idea--nobody had said anything, of course--it took one kitten, as they take them, by the skin of the neck, and came and put it between my feet; I did not stir; it returned, took the second, put it there; it took the third, it put it there, and when all three were there, it looked at me, mewed and was gone. And this was the first time it went out after having had them; it went to the garden, went to satisfy its needs and to eat, because it was at peace, they were there between my feet. And when it had its young, it wanted to carry them on its back like a woman. And when it slept beside me, it slept on the back. It was never like a cat.

Well, these things are habits of the species, movements of the species. There are many others of the kind, you see, but this is an example.

These animals which are extraordinary like this one, after death do they come back in a human body?

Ah!

There was a cat... what its name was I don't know; and I had many cats, you know, so I don't remember now; there was one called Kiki, it was the first son of this cat, and then there was another, its second son (that is to say, born another time) which was called Brownie.

This one was admirable and it died of the cat disease--as there is a disease of the dogs, there is a disease of the kittens--I don't know how it caught the thing, but it was wonderful during its illness and I was taking care of it as of a child. And it always expressed a kind of aspiration. There was a time before it fell ill... we used to have in those days meditation in a room of the Library House, in the room there--Sri Aurobindo's own room--and we used to sit on the floor. And there was an armchair in a corner, and when we gathered for the meditation this cat came every time and settled in the armchair and [old p. 100]literally it entered [new p. 99]into a trance, it had movements of trance; it did not sleep, it was not asleep, it was truly in a trance; it gave signs of that and had astonishing movements, as when animals dream; and it didn't want to come out from it, it refused to come out, it remained in it for hours. But it never came in until we were beginning the meditation. It settled there and remained there throughout the meditation. We indeed had finished but it remained, and it was only when I went to take it, called it in a particular way, brought it back into its body, that it consented to go away; otherwise no matter who came and called it, it did not move. Well, this cat always had a great aspiration, a kind of aspiration to become a human being; and in fact, when it left its body it entered a human body. Only it was a very tiny part of the consciousness, you see, of the human being; it was like the opposite movement from that of the woman with the other cat. But this one was a cat which leaped over many births, so to say, many psychic stages to enter into contact with a human body. It was a simple enough human body, but still, all the same...

There is a difference in the development of a cat and of a human being...

It happens... I think these are exceptional cases, but still it happens.

In these cases is the psychic conscious?

The aspiration is conscious, yes, conscious. The aspiration was very conscious in it, very conscious. It is not a formed psychic as when the psychic becomes a completely independent being, it is not that; but it is an aspiration, it is an ardent aspiration for progress--as we, you know, we have the aspiration to become supramental beings instead of remaining human beings, well, it was something absolutely similar: it was a cat doing yoga--exactly--to become a man.

It was perhaps because its mother had in it a movement, a [new p. 100][old p. 101]formation, an emanation of consciousness which had belonged to a human being; it is probably that which had left a kind of nostalgia for the human life which gave it this intensity of aspiration. But truly it did yoga for that.

*The Mother on Animals*

The reindeer on the envelope is the symbol of endurance.

15 February 1933


(About a picture of a dove)

I am sending you the bird of your name: Peace.


16 February 1933

*The cat means receptivity.*

21 February 1933

The pelican on the envelope is the symbol of devotedness.

It was at this moment that the foundation of the Ashram was laid, even though it was not consciously planned or discussed. Things took their own course and there was an organic development. It is characteristic of the Mother that even at this stage she already included in these developments members of the animal and plant world. A well-kept garden took shape in the courtyard, and some cats which received the Mother's special attention found their way into the small community. She had special food prepared for them and gave them special names. These were not ordinary cats which came here to the Mother. There was one cat which used to bring all its kittens to the Mother, as soon as they could use their eyes, and drop them at the Mother's feet, as if to seek her blessings for them. Another cat took part in the collective meditation and its body used to shake and tremble, whilst its eyes remained closed, as if it had some visions.
 One day a cat named *Kiki* happened to play with a scorpion and got stung. It quickly ran to the Mother and showed her the paw which was already dangerously swollen. "I took my little cat -it was really sweet -and put it on a table and called Sri Aurobindo. I told him, 'Kiki has been stung by a scorpion, it must be cured. ' The cat stretched its neck and looked at Sri Aurobindo, its eyes already a little glassy. Sri Aurobindo sat before it and looked at it also. Then we saw this little cat gradually beginning to recover, to come round, and an hour later it jumped to its feet and went away completely healed. "
 We can see from a report of Champaklal how far the Mother went in her care for these representatives of the animal world. "During those early days, she herself used to prepare a pudding. Of that pudding she would put aside a small quantity in a small dish; she would add a little milk to it and stir it with a spoon till it became liquid and consistent. She showed me how to do it and was particular that no grains should be left unmashed. ..And do you know for whom this part of the pudding was meant? For cats. *Later on I learnt that they were not really cats but something more.*

when Sri Aurobindo and Mother lived in Library House, Sri Aurobindo used to remove (with Chinese chopsticks) the bones from the fish that Mother fed the cats.

From *Champaklal speaks*

------------

*The Mother:*
In other words, you may follow, as Ramakrishna says, either the path of the baby monkey or that of the baby cat. The baby monkey holds to its mother in order to be carried about and it must hold firm, otherwise if it loses its grip, it falls. On the other hand, the baby cat does not hold to its mother, but is held by the mother and has no fear nor responsibility; it has nothing to do but to let the mother hold it and cry ma ma.

----
*MP Pandit*

There is a photograph of the Mother looking out from a window with a
dog by her side. But we have not heard her speaking of dogs as she has done of cats. Cats seem to have come into Mother's life from an early period, dating as far back as her stay in Tlemcen where she had occasion to meet the King of Cats on an occult plane and he gave her power over cats.

The Mother's contact with cats is certainly not as with some pets. She was concerned with the cats from an evolutionary point of view and she carried out certain experiments to see how far their progression towards the human stage could be expedited. She had found them remarkably sensitive and capable of responding to psychic touch.

Cats are known for their vital force. They are very good vehicles for
the vital forces of dead persons, as the Mother found out during her days in Paris. More than once when persons known to her died, the first intimation she received of the happening was through cats incarnation the vital force of the departed, their very eyes were vivid reproduction of the eyes of those persons. Many are the accounts of cats of diverse types and their young ones under the solicitous care of the Mother in Pondicherry. She speaks of cats meditating. There was one particular cat that used to join Sri Aurobindo and the Mother when they meditated. It would appear it would jump up on the vacant chair in Sri Aurobindo's room and go into trance; it would emanate strange sounds during that spell. On occasions Mother had to call it out lest it went in too deep for recall.

There was a cat who liked playing with scorpions. One day he got
stung. Mother put him on the table and called in Sri Aurobindo. He sat in front of the cat gazing at it for nearly twenty minutes. He did not touch it.

Very soon the animal relaxed and went to sleep. He woke up fully cured.

Then there was a cat with almost a child's consciousness. Mother took much interest in him and was always particular about his safety. It appears one day he was poisoned. The Mother felt it so much that she cursed those who poison cats. Mother rarely cursed, but this time she cursed and cursed in anguish. That curse will operate always.

We know Sri Aurobindo also took interest in cats. At one time he used to feed them with fish, taking care to separate the bones from the flesh. He would not disturb a cat when it sat on his chair. He was keenly observant of the moods and expressions of cats and he has even written a beautiful sonnet on a cat, entitling it,
*Despair on the stair-case.*

Despair on the Staircase
Mute stands she, lonely on the topmost stair,
An image of magnificent despair;
The grandeur of a sorrowful surmise
Wakes in the largeness of her glorious eyes.
In her beauty’s dumb significant pose I find

The tragedy of her mysterious mind.
Yet is she stately, grandiose, full of grace.
A musing mask is her immobile face.
Her tail is up like an unconquered flag,
Its dignity knows not the right to wag.
An animal creature wonderfully human,
A charm and miracle of fur-footed Brahman,
Whether she is spirit, woman or a cat,
Is now the problem I am wondering at.
-------------------------------------

From that momentous evening of 29th February, 1956, Mother
began to have from week to week, from day to day, various experiences of the Supermind in Matter. On the 3rd February,
1958, Mother had for the first time a radical experience in which she went strolling in a concrete way in an objective
supramental world-a world that exists in itself, beyond all
subjectivity. In the evening class of the 19th February, 1958,
the record of this experience was réad out by her as follows:
Between the beings of the supramental world and men, there
exists approximately the same gap as between men and animals.

Sometime ago, I had the experienceo of identification with animal life, and it is a fact that animals do not understand us; their consciousness is so constituted that we elude them almost entirely. And yet I have known domestic animals-cats and dogs, but especially cats--who made an almost yogic effort of consciousness to understand us. But generally, when they watch us living and acting, they don't
understand, they don't see us as we are, and they suffer because of us. We are a constant enigma to them. Only a very tiny part of their consciousness is linked to us. And it is the same for us when we try to look at the supramental world.

Only when the link of consciousness has been built shall we see it-and even then, only that part of our being which has
undergone the transformation will be capable of seeing it as
it is-otherwise the two worlds would remain as separate as
the animal world and the human world.

The experience I had on February 3 proves this. Before, I had had an individual, subjective contact with the supramental world, whereas on February 3, I went strolling there
in a concrete way-as concretely as I used to go strolling in Paris in times past-in a world that exists in itself, beyond all subjectivity.

It is like a bridge being built between the two worlds.

—-------—-------------------
*On Sept 7, 1913, Sri Aurobindo noted the decision making process that he observed in animals:*

All the perceptions do not yet come at the right time, some revealing themselves after the thing perceived has passed out of the mind of the object. Nevertheless the movements of men & animals are now perfectly understood, their hesitations & rejected or modified ideas & impulses as well as those which eventuate in action. It is evident, now, out of what a complex mental tangle the single clear & decisive act proceeds. In the animals it is sometimes an obscure & sudden suggestion which contradicts all the previous thinking & tendency & often half consciously forces the action. But often also in them an impulse abandoned and forgotten by the mind remains in & dominates the subconscious pranic energy and dominates a subsequent action. The same is true but in a less degree of man. In the insects the mind counts for much less than this pranic energy.

Similarly, *on March 24, 1914, he discusses the range of emotions passing through two squabbling cats:*

Proofs of the idea-perception are being multiplied; e.g., a quarrel between two cats on the opposite terrace, a black tom & a white pet cat; almost all the movements could be followed & predicted; 1st. the intention of the black to leap on the parapet of the stairs where the white had taken refuge, then, partly from discretion, partly in obedience to aishwarya, its slow departure, but this was not actually foreseen, the emotions of its retreat, sullen anger, pride, fear of attack (this was proved by the frequent look back, yet not too frequent, from pride), the half idea of returning & pursuing the quarrel, always abandoned, the intention to come on to our kitchen roof, the turning aside for the direct descent, (here there was a doubt whether the reading of the intention was correct, probably caused by a hesitation in the cat himself whether he should not deviate to another side)], the final descent before the doubt could be solved.

Sri Aurobindo seems to be indicating, based on his yogic powers, that animals have emotions and mental states. While this may seem obvious to laypersons in general and animal lovers in particular, it is certainly not the case with psychologists and philosophers who have engaged in vigorous, and some might say hair-splitting, debate on what qualifies as awareness in animals and how to design controlled experiments to measure it. We shall touch upon this topic in a later section.

*Based on his spiritual experiences, Sri Aurobindo once rebutted the views of Canadian psychiatrist Richard Maurice Bucke (1837-1902) on animal sentience:*

“…his statement that man has self-consciousness while the animal has none is not quite true. And his argument is: because animals, have no articulate speech and because they don’t know that they exist, therefore they are not self-conscious. He admits that animals have reasoning power. But it is not true that they have no language. They have some sort of intoned sounds which are like the language of the pigmies and also they have a power of wonderful telepathic communication of impulse … So, having no articulate language does not imply absence of self-consciousness. Of course, the animals have no intellectual ideas to convey. But they have self-consciousness [5].”

*In another conversation, He elucidated on animal sentience:*

They say that animals can’t think or reason. It is not altogether true. They have an intelligence which acts within narrow limits of the needs of their life. These faculties are latent in the animals and have not been developed, that’s all. Cats have a language of their own. They utter different kinds of mews for different purposes. For instance, when the mother cat mews in a particular tone and rhythm after leaving her kittens behind a box, the little ones understand that they are not to move from that place until she comes back and repeats that mew. It is through the tone and the rhythm through the tone and the rhythm that cats express themselves… We had, when we were staying in Rue suffrin, a bitch left by someone in the house had a room upstairs with glass window and a bath-room at one extremity. One day this bitch found herself locked out. She tried all sorts of devices to enter the room but could not as the main door and the windows were all closed. As all attempts failed, she sat down in front of the window and began to think; how to get in? The way she sat and the attitude of her sitting showed clearly that she was thinking. Then suddenly she got up as if saying: Ah, there is the bath-room door! Let me try it. She went in that direction. The door there was open and she got in. It is the Europeans who make a big difference between man and animals. The only difference is the animals can’t form a concept, can’t read or write or philosophize.

*Sri Aurobindo’s observations on animal cognition can be boiled down into five main points.* 
- Animals have a wide range of emotions;
- a language capability of intoned sounds like pygmies;
- limited reasoning power or an “intelligence which acts within narrow limits of the needs of their life”;
- a “power of wonderful telepathic communication of impulse”; and
- most important of all, self-consciousness.

Sri Aurobindo observations can be boiled down into five assertions:

*Animals have a wide range of emotions*:
This is aligned with recent scientific evidence. As seen above, animals exhibit emotional fever, ambient emotional states and other non-trivial emotions.

*Animals have a rudimentary language capability:*
This is aligned with the current scientific data, and has been documented across several species.

*Animals have an “intelligence which acts within narrow limits of the needs of their life*: 
This is also aligned with the current scientific evidence. Animals can’t function completely like humans but they do exhibit limited rational skills.

*Animals have a “power of wonderful telepathic communication of impulse*: This is not yet scientifically proven, or if it is, I do not know the exact experiment which proves it.

*Animals have self-consciousness:*
This issue may not be easily resolved because the definition of consciousness itself is a trenchant topic. In Western psychology, (by and large) consciousness is regarded as a by-product of brain activity, whereas in Indian psychology, consciousness is regarded as the primordial substance whose differentiations create the observable universe with its numerous occult worlds, along with the indwelling living souls who, by virtue of being a microcosm of the macrocosm, inherit a spark of consciousness and five sheaths.

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Sri Aurobindo writes: "Nature,--not as she is in her divine Truth, the conscious Power of the Eternal, but as [new p. 60]she appears to us in the Ignorance,--is executive [old p. 60]Force, mechanical in her steps, not consciously intelligent to our experiences of her, although all her works are instinct with an absolute intelligence." —
*The Synthesis of Yoga*, p. 91

*The Mother*
Nature is not consciously intelligent?...

There is an intelligence which acts in her and through her, in her action, but she is not conscious of this intelligence. You can understand this with animals. Take ants, for example. They do exactly what they have to do; all their work and organisation is something which really looks perfect. But they are not conscious of the intelligence which organises them. They are moved mechanically by an intelligence of which they are not aware. And even if you take the most developed animals, like the cat and dog for instance, they know exactly what they have to do: a cat bringing up its little ones brings them up just as well as a woman hers--sometimes better than a woman but it is impelled by an intelligence which moves it automatically. It is not conscious of the intelligence which makes it do things. It is not aware of it, it can't change anything at all in the movement by its own will. Something makes it act mechanically but over that it has no control.

If a human being intervenes and trains a cat, he can make it change its behaviour; but it is the consciousness of the human being which acts upon it, not its own consciousness. It is not conscious of the intelligence which makes it act.

And this kind of self-awareness, this possibility of watching oneself acting, of understanding why one does things, how one does them and, therefore, of having a control and changing the action--that belongs to the mind and in his own right to man. This is the essential difference between a man and an animal--that a man is conscious of himself, that he can become aware of the force which makes him act, and not only become aware of it but control it. [new p. 61][old p. 61]

But all those who feel themselves driven by a force and say, "I was forced to do it", without the participation of their will, show that they are still deeply rooted in animality, that is to say, in the inconscient. One begins to become a conscious human being only when one knows why one does things and when one is capable of changing one's action by a determined will, when one has a control. Before having any control, one is still more or less an animal with a small embryo of consciousness which is just beginning, a little flame flickering and trying to burn, and likely to be blown out by the slightest passing breeze.