Why Do Animals Fear Death?

[The White Belt]

Hey.

 

I'll make it short.

If animals have no-self, no ego, then why do they clearly fear death (We see this when cows watch other cows be slaughtered)? What are they hanging onto?

 

Thanks!

[aurum]

Who said they don't?

 

[Leo Gura]

@BeginnerActualizer Although animals don't have a human-like ego, they still have a sense of self. Without a sense of self, the body could not survive. Fundamentally, organisms must differentiate successfully between self and environment.

An animal is an organism. An organism is a self-survival machine. That's it's job: to survive. So of course it would instinctively avoid death.

Notice though, that animals fear death in a much different way than humans. They fear death only when their lives are directly threatened. So it's part of an immediate survival response. Whereas most humans fear death conceptually by creating fantasies, stories, and worry. Animals don't worry about death. They just avoid it.

[WelcometoReality]

@BeginnerActualizer You can learn a dog to make tricks and feeding it treats. The dog learns it and does the trick in hope of getting that treat and it does it automatically and unconsciously. So it has behavior that has been learned from past experiences meaning it does have an ego.

That said it does not have as complex ego as a human. A human ego can plan 30 years into the future. It can hold onto the memories of the past. A dog will always be in the present moment so in that regard it does not have as BIG an ego as humans do.

Edited November 9, 2016 by WelcometoReality

[Frogfucius]

It's the most primitive instinct of all life forms. It was hardwired into DNA since the very beginning - otherwise life would have died out from this planet a long time ago. Same goes for receiving nourishment/energy from the environment. From the very beginning of time, even before life or this planet existed, this held to be true.

2 minutes ago, WelcometoReality said:

@BeginnerActualizer You can learn a dog to make tricks and feeding it treats. The dog learns it and does the trick in hope of getting that treat and it does it automatically and unconsciously. So it has behavior that has been learned from past experiences meaning it does have an ego.

That said it does not have as complex ego as a human. A human ego can plan 30 years into the future. It can hold onto the memories of the past. A dog will always be in the present moment so in that regard it does not have as BIG of ego as humans do.

It's not necessarily an ego thing. Human babies can learn by experiences and conditioning as well. I wouldn't say babies have egos.

[Bizarre]

I think ego is a language thing mainly.  Were all programmes here, animals, humans, plants, it's just that humans use the 1st, 2nd and 3rd person pronouns so tend to take or assign credit for what is appearing in their stream of experience.

[WelcometoReality]

7 hours ago, Frogfucius said:

It's not necessarily an ego thing. Human babies can learn by experiences and conditioning as well. I wouldn't say babies have egos.

It depends on how you want to define ego. Babies probably don't have a sense of self in the beginning so by that definition you are right, but I wouldn't say a dog has that either. That comes from the learning of a language.

[CuteCornDog]

The more a person or an animal is taken care of, the more likely they are to fear death.

[The White Belt]

21 minutes ago, CuteYTDog said:

The more a person or an animal is taken care of, the more likely they are to fear death.

I don't believe that in the slightest. 

[Prabhaker]

On 11/9/2016 at 3:10 AM, GTITurbolover said:

I think ego is a language thing mainly.

What about feelings, emotions, moods ?  Agony, fear, anguish, anxiety, anger, violence, sadness -- all these things happen to the animal.

On 11/9/2016 at 1:07 AM, BeginnerActualizer said:

fear death (We see this when cows watch other cows be slaughtered)?

When Ramana Mahrishi's cow 'Laxmi' was dying, Ramana was present there.

Somebody asked Ramana, "Is this cow going to be born as a man?"

Ramana said, "No. She will not need to be born as a man -- she has passed beyond that. She is not going to be born at all. She has attained enlightenment."

Even animals, if they are receptive... and cows are very receptive. That's why in the India they have become sacred. It is not for no reason at all -- they are very receptive, open. They can grow in consciousness. No other animal can take this jump that the cow can take.

[Dodo]

4 hours ago, Prabhaker said:

What about feelings, emotions, moods ?  Agony, fear, anguish, anxiety, anger, violence, sadness -- all these things happen to the animal.

When Ramana Mahrishi's cow 'Laxmi' was dying, Ramana was present there.

Somebody asked Ramana, "Is this cow going to be born as a man?"

Ramana said, "No. She will not need to be born as a man -- she has passed beyond that. She is not going to be born at all. She has attained enlightenment."

Even animals, if they are receptive... and cows are very receptive. That's why in the India they have become sacred. It is not for no reason at all -- they are very receptive, open. They can grow in consciousness. No other animal can take this jump that the cow can take.

What happened to dolphins

[Prabhaker]

5 minutes ago, Dodoster said:

What happened to dolphins

Dolphins too have a evolved consciousness, not as developed as man’s, but the difference is only of degrees.

[Bizarre]

@Prabhaker This is where education falls short. You equate ego with the entire subtle and causal body of a sentient being. 

In a human subtle body (your own direct experience) there is an ego, an intellect and an emotional mind.

The causal body is the conditioning. 

Not everything is "ego".

[Prabhaker]

@GTITurbolover

Can fear, anguish, anxiety, anger, violence, sadness happen without an ego ? 

[Bizarre]

@Prabhaker Yest it can. Can you read my friend? Or you just here to spray Osho scented piss around the forum while all these give you points for your contradictory half baked ideas you stole from listening to hours of garbage from an egomaniac who needed 93rollls Royce's to feel ok about himself?

 

[Prabhaker]

2 minutes ago, GTITurbolover said:

Yes it can. Can you read my friend?

Then, how can we drop fear, anguish, anxiety, anger, violence, sadness ?

[Prabhaker]

41 minutes ago, GTITurbolover said:

you just here to spray Osho scented piss around the forum while all these give you points for your contradictory half baked ideas you stole from listening to hours of garbage from an egomaniac who needed 93rollls Royce's to feel ok about himself?

You too have listened to Osho for hours, otherwise how do you know my half baked ideas are stolen from Osho ?

[Bizarre]

26 minutes ago, Prabhaker said:

You too have listened to Osho for hours, otherwise how do you know my half baked ideas are stolen from Osho ?

Exactly. That's why I can tell you it's baloney . Some of it is truth and some of it was his opinions. When you're tamasic and intellectually dull you just indiscriminately swallow all of it because you're so desperate for knowledge because the self under the spell of illusion feels so dumb and empty and ignorant it looks for objects in the form of "information" so it can feel educated.  It's not the pursuit of freedom, it's the indirect pursuit of freedom in the form of mistaking the objects for the self.  That's the human condition. So when I was done with Oshos baloney and realized the limitations of it (that's called assimilation of experience by the way - learning the lessons inherent in life, which burns karma, makes the mind more satvic (closer to the truth) and that's when Isvara starts putting things in your lap that actually make sense. Because you earn it . You earn karma. So this is something you need to go through yourself. Understand that as you swallow Oshos truth, you also swallow his ignorance. After that it's time to move on. Or don't. Just stay here and continue to be intellectually dull and seeking information to fill the emptiness. Upto you. 

[Prabhaker]

@GTITurbolover

If fear, anguish, anxiety, anger, violence, sadness happen without an ego, how can we drop them?

[Bizarre]

25 minutes ago, Prabhaker said:

@GTITurbolover

If fear, anguish, anxiety, anger, violence, sadness happen without an ego, how can we drop them?

Animals experience these emotions. But they don't make an identity out of it. They don't claim these feelongs. When one cat has a fight with another cat and loses the fight it just walks away and licks it's wounds back to health and thats the end of it.

It doesn't make an identity of it and get on the phone to its therapist and start crying about what a failure it is.  It doesn't listen to Osho for hours so it can feel superior about itself 

And it doest keep asking the same qualestions over and over So it can prove its supremacy against another ego.

Because it doesn't have the capacity for language. It's a rudimentary programme. 

YOU don't let go of anything. You stop perpetuating the story by identification with the feelings. Only humans do that. 

Got it?

Or do you want me to draw you a picture?

Edited November 11, 2016 by GTITurbolover