Communicating With Rats and Snakes in Tamera:
Learning to Co-operate with Animals

by Sabine Lichtenfels and Barbara Kovats / Tamera Center for Humane Ecology

Animals, like humans, are expressions of life: soul-full organs in the body of Creation. If we harm them then we are harming the very same Creation which we ourselves are part of. However, if we enter into contact with them then our lives change; a fascinating journey of discovery begins. This is a report about attempts to communicate with the rats in Tamera.

For a long time now in Tamera, we have been carrying out initial experiments to communicate and co-operate with animals. After the thousands of years of fear- and violence-filled history, it requires a very cautious, determined but also playful rapprochement. The results are inspiring: frogs at the 'Oracle Source' no longer leap away, instead they approach, full of curiosity, when humans arrive. Snakes repeatedly lie on the doorstep or even seek direct contact with people. In this article, we will highlight just one example from many, since this one is currently the most continuously researched: our contact with the rats.

Just the mere mention of the word 'rat' triggers feelings of fear, disgust and horror in many people. In the towns, pest controllers are paid to ensure that the town remains 'rat-free'. Nevertheless, the rat is biologically very close to the human. It has an astoundingly similar genetic code. This is one of the reasons why rats are forced to die and be tortured in horrible ways in research laboratories all over the world 'for the benefit of humanity'.

Nonetheless, rats continue to seek out for themselves contact with humans and like to make themselves at home in our living places. If you look for contact to the rats instead of chasing them away then you will be guided through many layers of your own soul, layers which relate to angst and disgust. The homeless, the failures, those who have to live in the dark corners of the cellar, 'the scum of society': these are the ones who have to live with rats. Slums and flood- or epidemic- stricken areas: here the rats are at home. We picture them as bearers of disease; in many films they are portrayed as aggressive animals who even attack humans. I remember well my own fear of rats which I had as a teenage girl. Fear creates aggression or hysteria.

If, on the other hand, contact can be made to this animal, then it appears completely normal and familiar. We in Tamera were able to study this process within ourselves. Initially the old fears surfaced which we thought we had overcome long ago. Even those who consciously knew no fear of rats experienced sudden irrational images of witch-hunts or similar horrors. It seemed as if rudimentarily recorded memories of the soul were being awakened - threatening memories. It is not long ago that women were persecuted for being witches simply because they tried to communicate with animals. Our reactions are sudden, completely beyond reason. Sitting deep in our soul is the message: I don't want anything to do with rats! However, our defences are not provoked by the rats themselves, but by our desire not to have anything to do with the traumatic associations set loose within us by the word 'rat'. The fear that we have has nothing to do with the reality of a rat.

The rats in Tamera provoked us into communication when they moved into the newly built Akron House a year ago. We tried using meditation to get them to move out. Our numerous attempts failed. Instead, they became even more intrusive. This simply aroused really old fears and defences in many of us.

It was only as we had the idea of offering them an alternative that we had any success. Using visual meditations we tried to offer the rats another place to live - an old ruin in our budding Peace Garden, which we had given a roof. Suddenly the rats were really gone. They had moved out. After a while, we were able to confirm that they had moved into the old ruin; from this time on it has borne the name 'Rat Temple'.

About one year later, however, they returned to House Akron. Why? In meditation we received the clear information that they wanted more contact with us humans. We decided to visit them every morning in the Rat Temple. The success was once again clear to see. The rats moved back out of House Akron. In the Temple, the first rats began to show themselves to us. First, they made themselves noticeable with sounds, and then they also made themselves visible. Now a reception party takes place every morning, where they appear in great numbers. After a while, they even dared to come and eat from the plate of food which we brought them while we were present. During our visits, we could clearly observe that the rats have the same fear of humans as humans have of rats.

As humans reduce their fear and anger, the same transformation happens amongst the rats. It was inspiring to experience firsthand how they approached with caution and then became more confident from day to day. In the meantime, there are even some who will come right up to an outstretched hand. Now we are faced with the challenge of not turning them into tame zoo animals. Sometimes we get the impression that the rats are really looking for communication with humans, not just contact. Again and again, when we meditate intensively in the Rat Temple, unusual communications appear. Suddenly we will experience an urgent and existential call from an animal soul that wants to tell us something.

This newly started experiment will probably turn into a long-term research which leads us ever deeper into the wonders of nature, her connections and communication structures. There is only one Being. Could a human who has experienced the beauty, wildness and intelligence of a rat ever permit them to be tortured and killed in vivisection laboratories? No! If we get involved in this experiment of co-operating with our fellow living beings, then it will change our life.

Creation is a Whole. Within this Whole, holistic laws apply. If humans destroy or torment a part of this Whole they cause more than just a localised wound: pain, shock and fear arise in the inner part of the whole organism. This means that the way we are treating animals in factory farms, slaughter houses and vivisection laboratories creates pain and fear within the whole biosphere and therefore within every one of us as well. The powers of trust and original love are abused, they do not receive any positive feedback from the world, they are disappointed, rejected.

In order to heal the animal powers, places are needed where animals, and all other creatures, are once again able to trust. These will be places where humans fully re-assume their roles as guardian and protector - the roles they should really fulfil vis-à-vis other creatures. This is a significant aspect of the contribution that Healing Biotopes and their Peace Gardens can make towards holistic healing. If continuity here leads to trust being built up, then a new basis for co-operation between humans and animals will arise.

Reports about the Bishnoi - a religious community in India - show us just how far this trust from animals towards humans can go. The Bishnoi, who live in the Radjasthani deserts, take it for granted that they lay out watering and feeding places for the animals and protect the surrounding areas from hunters. They themselves do not eat meat, since they regard it as obvious that animals are beings with the same divine essence as humans. In the vicinity of the Bishnoi settlements, it is possible to observe that the animal world's fear gradually disappears. Even the antelope, known for being timid animals, can be seen playing with the Bishnoi children.

We in Tamera want to create these areas of protection and trust just like the Boshnoi do. Notice boards on our land inform hunters that a Healing Biotope is developing and asking them not to hunt here. The hunters and the hunt-associations are beginning to accept and support our wishes. The children from our emerging Children's Republic paint animal pictures, talk about our intentions with the hunters on the days of the hunts and are doing a lot for sick animals in the neighbourhood.

The animals - with their fine-tuned senses - are aware of this growing protection and they are taking the risk of showing themselves to us increasingly often. Animals have souls made of the same inner substance as humans' souls. They are expressions of the greater world soul, which is also within us. "Through your eyes shines the light, Mashallah, wonder of God in you". This song celebrates a fact that applies to an animal just as it applies to any human who faces me. The soul lives in both of us and in both cases it is the universal essence of being: "the wonder of God in you".

The animal world is a master of accomplishment when it comes to precision, composure, concentration, transformation and the realisation of powers. All these qualities are expressions of their connectedness with the universal body of life from which they originate, and from which humans also originate. Humanity can learn a lot from the qualities which an animal life has when it is lived out in a state of inter-connectedness. In this sense, animal life is a spiritual teacher for us. We can even learn from animals how to see the Earth's ethereal properties and energy flows, since whales, migratory birds, ants and others orient themselves in this way. They co-operate with Creation's powers and have strong abilities, for example, to see changes in the weather coming. Perhaps they can even influence the weather, as it is said that frogs can do. If humans learn once again to co-operate with animals, then through them we can get to know Creation in all its detail, and learn how to co-operate with it.

The first step towards co-operation is perception. We need lengthy training before we are able to silence our prefabricated conceptions and really take notice of just whom our counterpart is. Each living being vibrates at its own frequency. If we can succeed in really perceiving the vibration of another being, then we can find the level on which we can learn how to co-operate and to send and receive information. Dorothy Maclean (co-founder of Findhorn and author) made this discovery with plants. Her ability to perceive the plants' "Devas" - we could also say "the plants' spiritual beings" - was an important basis of the extraordinary growth rate of the Findhorn garden's plants.

Every child has probably dreamt of being able to speak to the animals or plants; it is an archetypical image. Later it is dismissed as childish. When we re-open our adult's heart for this image, it brings our soul into a state of almost holy excitement. Who hasn't been touched by the images of St. Francis of Assisi speaking with the birds? Is this something that only Saints can do? Or can anyone learn it?

We can assume that in earlier cultures this ability was part of normal life. In the book Traumsteine (Dreamstones) by Sabine Lichtenfels there are impressive descriptions of how the contact with all living beings was taken for granted in earlier nomadic or half-nomadic cultures. Contact to plants and animals was a significant part of everyone's path of development.

Children and youth received schooling in this contact - it was fundamental to their later path through life. Whoever wanted to learn how to really love another human had, as a pre-requisite, to study love towards plants and animals. They were helpers for humans. The concept that plants and animals also have a soul was obvious. It was also clear that humans share the responsibility for all beings. How did the ancients discover the numerous healing plants, when they didn't have chemical laboratories? By questioning them. How could they protect themselves from the many wild animals? By co-operating with them. Is this picture a naïve dream from the spiritual New Age? A typical retreat from reality? Or is it a sober fact, which we could re-learn today? We are faced with this question again and again.

Take initiative for this project

We need financial and material support to continue with the necessary constructions on our place. Please help so that our work can succeed and help to invest into a future worth living. No more investment into a culture of the destruction of life, but instead into a culture of compassion and cooperation with all beings. For more information about possiblities of support for Tamera, please click here.

For more information, email Tamera at tamera@mail.telepac.pt or visit the website at Tamera.org.

THANK YOU! The Tamera-Team
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