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<p class="paracenter">SECOND SIGHT
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<p class="paracenter"></p>
<p class="para">We know that animals generally possess sharp senses to an 
extraordinary degree. They can hear and smell at a distance far beyond what is 
normal to the human sense. Give a kerchief used by a man to a dog, it will spot 
the man among a thousand. An elephant will take you straight to a place miles 
away where there is water, if you happen to be stranded in waterless 
surroundings. Where there is no question of sight or smell, even then the 
animals perceive things in a queer way: an elephant, again, for example, 
refusing to advance further upon road, because, as it was discovered later on, 
the road was hollow inside and would have sunk down had the animal walked upon 
it. There are other countless phenomena to prove the keenness and subtlety of 
the animal sense or <i>instinct, </i>as it is called.
</p>
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<p class="para"> Perception means contact with the 
object. Now, what is it that contacts? In ordinary sense-perception, the normal 
human sense-perception, for example, it is the physical vibration emanating from 
the object that contacts the physical organ: the distance at which the vibration 
can be received depending on the
</p>
<br><p class="pageno">Page-114</p>
<hr>
<p class="para">sensitivity of the recipient nerves. In man the sensitivity is 
limited, in the animal it is highly intense. This is however, only one factor of 
the phenomenon. We will explain.
</p>
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<p class="para"> As it is well-known, there are 
three levels of consciousness: the physical, the vital and the mental; for the 
present we leave out of consideration the fourth or the spiritual (including the 
psychic). Not only so, in each level or plane all the others are also involved 
i.e. lie secreted. Thus, in the mind there is a vital mind and a physical mind, 
in the vital there is a mental vital and a physical vital. So, in the physical 
too there are these three grades: (1) physical physical, (2) vital physical and 
(3) mental physical.
</p>
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<p class="para"> We will now better understand the 
process of contact in sense perception. The purely material contact, physical 
vibration touching the physical nerves of the particular organ is an instance of 
the physical physical perception: the dog smelling or the elephant hearing at 
extraordinary distances. We have heard of men who, by putting their ear upon the 
ground, are able to catch sounds coming from a great distance and practically 
inaudible to others standing by. But there is another class where the material 
vibration is not at issue, it is the vital vibration in the physical touching 
the vital physical of the receiver. The elephant finding the water or sensing
</p>
<p class="para">
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</p><p class="pageno">Page-115</p>
<hr>
<p class="para">the hollow road is an instance in point. The mental physical, 
the last of the three is a kind of intuition in the physical, that is what is 
usually called 'instinct'. A cat, for example, put in a sack and banished miles 
away from its home, will find its way back; a dog will go round the world almost 
and find and recognise its master even many years after (the first to recognise 
Ulysses was his dog). In man too the vital physical, more especially the mental 
physical not unoften finds room for play, although his physical physical i.e. 
purely material sensibility is extremely limited. This limitation of the 
physical sensibility in general, to whatever sphere it may belong, is due to the 
intellectual or rational bias that has developed in him. In the more 
unsophisticated races or types the sensibility is still maintained. Man can, 
however, cultivate, consciously develop these faculties: it then becomes what is 
called a system of Yoga. A familiar example of the mental physical action as 
cultivated in man is offered by the water diviner or dowser, as he is called. 
But, as I have said, the normal effect of human rationality is to inhibit the 
spontaneous action of the senses as it is natural with the animal.
</p>
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<p class="para"> It is interesting to note that 
animals in the wild state maintain intact their instinctive capacity, their 
&quot;second sight&quot;, but begin to lose it when they live with men, come under the 
influence of human mind
</p>
<br><p class="pageno">Page-116</p>
<hr>
<p class="para">and reason, become &quot;domesticated&quot;. A cow habituated to free 
grazing in the fields will never touch the poisonous grass, will always avoid it 
and take only the harmless and healthy variety; but kept within the stable, 
accustomed to a closed life, it loses its natural instinct, gets confused, does 
not know how to distinguish the right from the wrong food, being always given 
ready-made things by the master.
</p>
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<p class="para"> Human contact has thus a harmful 
effect upon the animal's instinctive life. But in another way it may have an 
uplifting influence too. Some of the refined human sentiments—sympathy, 
gratitude, faithfulness, self-sacrifice—in a pronounced human way find 
expression in animals that are domesticated and live close to man and within the 
human atmosphere. It is true many of these feelings are not totally absent in 
the animal kingdom (especially in the higher strata) in its natural or wild 
state, but they belong to the level of pure feeling or impulse and have not 
risen to the level of sentiments which have a mental element infused into their 
vital stuff. Indeed a strong mental element, a reasoning capacity sometimes very 
clearly develops in the domestic animal.
</p>
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<p class="para"> The animal acts by instinct, we 
say; that is to say, it goes straight to the thing to be done: in order to do a 
thing it does not make a choice between possibilities, there is no selective 
process in its consciousness. It is
</p>
<br><p class="pageno">Page-117</p>
<hr>
<p class="para">the human consciousness alone that says, &quot;this is not to be 
done, but that to be done, not this but that&quot; or puts the question, &quot;which one, 
to be or not to be?&quot; This is what we mean by discrimination or deliberation. 
Normally, this faculty is absent in the animal. We have said of refined feelings 
in man; &quot;refined&quot; here need not mean always ennobled or morally elevated; it may 
mean also more subtle, more complicated and be applied to some baser—acute 
perverse—feelings which are perhaps peculiarly human. Domestic animals sometimes 
contract them from men: jealousy, spitefulness, vengeance, vindictiveness of an 
extreme degree are likely to be found more among animals living with men than 
those that are in the wild state. We have heard of elephants brooding over a 
hurt or even an insult for long months and taking revenge when occasion presents 
itself. And we have heard of a cat jumping out of a window into the street below 
and killing itself simply because it thought its mistress showed more love 
towards another cat.
</p>
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<p class="para"> The humanising of animals living 
with men, through its good and bad effects, has an evolutionary value: that is 
to say, some animals in that way attain almost to a human status in their soul. 
And occultists state that souls do pass in this manner from the animal to the 
human incarnation.
</p>
<br><p class="pageno">Page-118</p>
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