Library of Congress CCN 67-10417

CHAPTER 07
Consideration of the Spiritual Side

In this pool they were in a relatively protected part of their own ocean. Every night, every day, twenty-four hours, 365 days and nights a year, their whole lives were spent in the sea. They cannot afford fear of wind, fear of the waves, fear of the darkness. fear of the depth. Tbe dolphins must stay at least half awakeall of the time. This is their usual, everyday, evcrynight life. We will not get very far projecting our own fears and states of mind into the mind of the dolphin. We will get
much farther (as is shown in the last chapter) along leads which are different than our kinds of thinking.

It is an uplifting experience to imagine the seas and the oceans of this world of ours as a vast house of dolphins and whales. Audacious in the extreme is this featherless biped walking on the dry land which is my species. His little, dry spirit has a great deal of gall to try to push his way mto the primal soup. In the face of the dolphin's necessities, one quickly loses one's self-esteem. Perhaps we can brave out the terror of the deep but we are still not built nor equipped to live in it free as a dolphin. Their appropriateness of body for their life in tbe sea must be matched by their minds and their brains built aud equipped for this lifc. Their freedoms are our prison walls; and vice versa, our frredonts are their prisons. Every time I walk away from a dolphin in a pool, every time he swims away from me, I feel this reciprocity of freedoms-prisons.

We must assume that dolphins have their own principles, their own assumptions, their own postulates, and their own actions for their mental lives. It is probable that any large computer (such as their brains) has huge alien programs. At the very least, in our search, we can see if they act as if they do have consistent logical bases on which they operate. By living with them and forcing them to live with us, we can discover many of these things by behavioral methods.

At the very most, we some day may be able to ask them and see if their replies show familiar forms or whether we come upon only unknowu alien forms of thinking and of philosophy. Between these two extremes there are many other possibilities. For example, wc may ask questions vocally or nonvocally, verbally or nonverbally, and receive answers in these modes. The answers mav be smnev hat t comprehensible or totally incomprehensible. Our thinking and speaking are only human. Their thinking. their speaking so far are oniy delphinic.

<----BACK -- NEXT ---->