The Spiritual Lives of Animals

Walt Whitman once wrote about other animals with deep admiration. He noted that they do not sweat or complain about their lot in life. They do not lie awake at night, weeping over their sins. Nor do they force people to listen to endless debates about their duty to God. As Whitman observed, not one animal is dissatisfied or driven mad by the desire to own things.

Here, the poet held up a mirror to humanity. We are creatures who inhabit animal bodies, yet we are complicated by something we call the soul. This soul is the organ of want and worry. We invented it to explain why we create art, why we fall in love, and why we try to speak with the universe through prayers and theories. It is bold to ask what a soul actually is. Carl Jung understood that it cannot be measured like a rock or a stone. He said, “The soul is partly in eternity and partly in time.” Virginia Woolf also recognized its elusive nature. She wrote, “One can’t write directly about the soul. Looked at, it vanishes.”

It is even more daring to challenge the old belief that only humans have souls. As we have slowly admitted that other creatures possess consciousness, we have still denied them souls. We do this because our tools of communication and computation have failed to probe their inner lives. We struggle to prove they have imagination, playfulness, love, grief, or wonder. Yet, our language contradicts our denial. The word “animal” comes from the Latin root for “soul.”

In 1991, long before modern technology allowed us to study the minds of octopuses or confirm that birds dream, Gary Kowalski explored this difficult question. He published The Souls of Animals, a book investigating the spiritual lives of whooping cranes, elephants, jackdaws, gorillas, songbirds, horses, dogs, and cats. At the center of his work is the idea that spirituality is a natural result of the biological order. He defines spirituality as the development of a moral sense, the appreciation of beauty, the capacity for creativity, and the awareness of oneself within a larger universe. This view echoes the thoughts of Kepler, who believed the Earth itself was a living body, and many native traditions that see animals as wise teachers.

Kowalski is a parish minister by trade. He spends his days praying with the dying and helping people with moral dilemmas. He celebrates the soul as the magic of life. He reflects:

For ancient peoples, the soul was located in the breath or the blood. For me, soul resides at the point where our lives intersect with the timeless... Soul is the marrow of our existence as sentient, sensitive beings. It’s soul that’s revealed in great works of art... Soul is what makes each of our lives a microcosm — not merely a meaningless fragment of the universe, but at some level a reflection of the whole.

Half a century after Henry Beston argued that we need a wiser concept of animals, Kowalski continued this work. He wrote:

Without anthropomorphizing our nonhuman relations we can acknowledge that animals share many human characteristics. They have individual likes and dislikes... They play and are curious about their world. They develop friendships and sometimes risk their own lives to help others... all the traits indicative of soul.

He argues that we cannot see or measure a soul directly. We can only observe its outward signs: tears, laughter, courage, and generosity. Soul is what happens behind the scenes when we are most alive. As modern seekers, we must examine questions like, “What makes us human?” and “What makes life sacred?” The danger is that we are often in over our heads. However, swimming in deep waters allows us to enrich our understanding of other creatures and gain insight into ourselves. When Kowalski watched a flock of shore birds rise and bank in perfect unison, he felt a sense of awe. He realized that these birds share a common thought, or a group mind. This synchronicity connects us to a deeper realm of spirit.

We have invented no greater expression of our inner life than music. It is the language of the soul. We know that animals use this language. Birds sing to bring life back in spring. Cicadas serenade the sun in summer. When humans sent a message into space on the Voyager Golden Record, we included whale songs alongside Bach and folk music.

Kowalski notes that birds sing for reasons beyond simple survival. Their songs are complex compositions, not just mechanical cries. Music is distinguished from noise by its creative intent. Creativity, he suggests, may be the purest evidence of a soul. He points out that while many birds are insensitive to pitch, the best singers use tone, rhythm, and variation to create pleasing patterns. This is the deliberate arrangement of sound.

Influenced by the philosopher Martin Buber, Kowalski warns against judging animals by human standards. He explains that birds live in a faster-paced world. Their metabolism is in a constant state of high speed. This is why their songs are short and high-pitched. To a bird, human beings might appear slow and dull. Just as human music reflects our inner rhythms, bird music expresses their rapid, intense existence.

Kowalski also examines visual art. In the 1950s, researcher Desmond Morris found that non-human primates given pens and paints developed distinct styles. They showed a sense of balance and symmetry. This suggests a spiritual longing to make a mark on the world. A striking example involves an elephant named Siri. In 1982, an art professor named Jerome Witkin viewed a portfolio of abstract drawings. He was impressed by their lyricism, beauty, and controlled energy. He believed they were the work of an extraordinary child or a master painter like Willem de Kooning. He did not know the artist was Siri, an eight-thousand-pound Asian elephant at a zoo in Syracuse. Her keeper had given her paper and charcoal after watching her draw in the dust.

This story inspired the poet May Sarton to write a poem about the event. In her verses, she described the elephant’s drawings as delicate, like Japanese calligraphy. She marveled at the skill of the elephant’s sensitive trunk. The poem highlighted how art can bridge the gap between species, revealing a shared capacity for beauty.

Two decades after Iris Murdoch linked art and morality, Kowalski turned to acts of selflessness. He looked for the moral faculty that forms the foundation of a soul. He noted that pelicans and crows have been seen caring for blind companions. Charles Darwin reported on monkeys helping a member trapped by an eagle, risking their own safety. However, one nineteenth-century naturalist provided perhaps the most moving account.

This man was collecting specimens, a practice that involved killing animals. He aimed his gun at a tern but only wounded it. The bird fell helplessly into the sea. Immediately, other terns began circling above, showing clear concern. Two of them dove down to their injured comrade. They lifted him up, one at each wing, and carried him several yards. They set him down gently, and another pair took over. The group took turns carrying the bird all the way to the shore. The naturalist was so moved by this display of compassion that he could not bring himself to shoot the bird. He left the scene without killing anything.

To witness such a scene is to feel wonder and humility. As Rachel Carson wrote, these are wholesome emotions that oppose destruction. A generation after Carson, Kowalski reflected on our responsibility. He argued that if we want to keep our planet safe, we must awaken to a new respect for all life. We are kin to, and must be kind to, all creation. Overcoming the illusion of human superiority is the next step in our moral evolution.

Beholding such moral feelings is stirring. But to be witnessed back by another creature’s eyes is a spiritual experience. Kowalski wrote about the difficulty of probing another’s inner awareness. He described it as a private, solitary castle. However, when we look into another’s eyes, we may find a small window into that inner sanctum. Eye contact assumes a conscious self on both sides. I see you seeing me. We are aware that we are looking at each other.

Perhaps, in the end, we do not have the power to acknowledge the souls of other creatures. Instead, other creatures confer soulfulness upon us. Kowalski wrote:

If by soul we mean our sense of self... then our souls are interwoven with those of other living beings... We know ourselves as human, in part, through our relationships with the nonhuman world.

He suggests that humans lack special biological gifts like acute hearing or incredible speed. We are adaptable but undefined. We have no fixed identity. Therefore, we need other creatures to help us understand who we are. We are the younger siblings in life’s family. We need models for how to live. We find those lessons in biology and the earth itself.

This leads to an urgent, existential question. What is the profit of gaining the world but losing our souls? The human race might survive without chimpanzees or orangutans. But we would lose the conditions necessary for our own ensoulment. When we look in the mirror, there would be less to love. Our lives have a glimmering of eternity. We are small and ephemeral, yet not insignificant. We matter because we care for one another. Because we dream, imagine, create music, and make art, we reflect the beauty of the whole. Because all life shares in one spirit, we can recognize this indwelling beauty in other creatures. Animals, like us, are microcosms of the universe.