Talking Beast 2

Beast of the Earth (Falnama: Book of Omens, circa 1580)

Three more chapters from  the complete text of Richard Ince's 1944 polemic Talking Beast. It was subtitled 'A Candid look into the Nature of Homo Vulgaris.' The title comes from Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia 'This Man, this Talking Beast, this Walking Tree.' There is some element in it of Oprah's favourite guru Eckhart Tolle and it is also a sort of prequel to British philosopher John Gray's 2002 classic  Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals.

Ince's mentor, also hailing from Marley Common near Haslemere, was the Stoic writer on philosophy and religion Archibald Weir - an early 20th Century follower of Marcus Aurelius. Weir's eldest grandson Nigel Weir, author of Verses of a Fighter Pilot had recently perished in the Battle of Britain and the book is dedicated to the Weir family, especially Archibald.

CHAPTER IV

FROM TALKING BEAST TO COMPLETE MAN

  When we consider the matter it becomes obvious that creation is not an act in time but a process in consciousness. The creator is still creating. Past, present and future have no relevance except as a measure used by space-time consciousness. This thin, tenuous, animal consciousness, evolved out of the unconscious background, enables the living organism to function in conditions known as incarnation. Having no experience or memory of any other conditions, it has to be content to remain a logically-arranged receiving apparatus for sense-perceptions  and messages from the unconscious.
  If we would understand better the relationship between this animal consciousness and the unconscious through which the creator creates, we should study evolution. From amoeba to man we see an extraordinary change.