Emelie Cajsdotter Transcript

Emelie Cajsdotter Interview

Summary:

  • Emelie Cajsdotter is a Swedish author and animal communicator. She discusses her book “All the King’s Horses” and her ability to share consciousness with other species.
  • Emelie’s first experience: Emelie recounts how she first experienced a deep connection with a pony when she was 11 years old. She describes how she felt what the pony felt, and how that opened a door to a different dimension of reality.
  • The difference between self and ego: Emelie explains how animals have taught her to differentiate between the self, which is the merging of body and soul, and the ego, which is the identity we create to survive in the world. She says that the self is an opening that can contain the entire world, while the ego is a limitation that isolates us from life.
  • The appreciation of life: Emelie shares how animals have a love and curiosity for life, and how they do not seek a meaning outside of it. She says that they do not see death as an end, but as a transition. She also says that they do not have a linear sense of time, but a nonlinear one, where everything is constantly changing and adapting.
  • The gap between humans and other species: The author argues that humans have lost a sense of value and self-respect by creating a gap between themselves and other species, leading to short-sightedness and destruction of the planet.
  • The balance point in evolution: The author discusses the idea of a balance point between acknowledging the complexity and sophistication of human nervous systems and cognition, and respecting the diversity and richness of other forms of life and consciousness.
  • The circle of hierarchy: The author suggests that hierarchy is not a linear scale of superiority, but a circle of interdependence and mutual learning, where each species has something to offer and something to receive from others.
  • The communication with plants and insects: The author shares her experiences of communicating with plants and insects, and how they reveal the generosity, creativity, and healing power of nature. She also challenges the notion that consciousness is tied to the brain, and proposes that it is more related to the soul.
  • The horses’ selection process: The horses choose the students for the course based on their curiosity, connection, and timing, not on their abilities or merits.
  • The course structure and content: The course lasts for two years, with eight weekend sessions per year, and personal exercises from a mentor horse in the winter. The students learn to communicate with the horses and other animals, and to experience their presence and compassion.
  • The course outcomes and impacts: The course helps the students to awaken their intuition, to expand their awareness, to deepen their relationship with nature, and to transform themselves and society. The course also creates a non-judgmental space for learning and sharing.

Full transcript:

Rick Archer: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer. Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of conversations with spiritually Awakening people. We’ve done nearly 700 of them now, if this is new to you, and you’d like to check out previous ones, go to batgap.com B-A-T-G-A-P .com, then look under the past interviews menu, where you’ll find them all organized in several different ways. This program is made possible through the support of appreciative listeners and viewers. So if you appreciate it and would like to help support it, there are PayPal buttons on the website, and there’s a page which explains some alternatives to PayPal. My guest today is Emelie Cajsdotter. Emelie is in Sweden. And she has written a book called “All the King’s Horses”, which I read in its entirety and found quite fascinating. Emelie has been working since 1995, full time with empathic communication with other species, non hierarchical writing and handling of horses, alternative treatments such as acupuncture, homeopathy, and herbal medicine. She has published three books on these subjects. She runs a school, mainly with horses and other species, for empathic inter being. This school is a farm that is a sanctuary for about 170 animals of different species, not to mention plants and surrounding nature. And most of those animals would have been euthanized if they hadn’t ended up at Emilie’s school and farm. And as we go along here, some of you might be thinking: “Well, how is this relevant to the usual BatGap theme”, but as we go along, I think you’re gonna see that it’s very relevant. And my impression of Emelie in reading her book is that she kind of has a foot in a couple of different dimensions. She really is an interdimensional person. And you’ll see what we mean by that, again, as we go along. And not only dimensions of consciousness, such as, you know, deep, communicative abilities with animals and some other people, but also dimensions of time, because there’s a whole theme in her book, which keeps popping up about her dipping into the memories of some young girl who lived a long time ago. And I found that interesting. But maybe a good place to start Emilie is Well, first of all, if you want to add to anything I just said, you can do that. But then I also want to ask you like, how did this all first start for you? How did you first start talking with animals? And what is it like to live with this ability?

Emelie Cajsdotter: Well, for me, it’s started spontaneously as a kid. I grew up in what, I don’t know how to use the right phrase here, but quite a destructive family situation. So so I tried to stay away from home as much as possible and ended up in a stable – a riding school stable and I lived in a city. So the stable and the horses were, were in the outskirts of the city, which was not a very good environment for horses. They were tied up in stalls, they were all the time in in an indoor arena, basically being forced to do what people told them to do. And and the riding lessons that you could get there was also about making the animals do as you told them, as it often is, even today. And when horses came to this, this riding school, they would they would gradually break down from this, this all these limitations and become dull, apathetic and go lame or whatever. And then one day there was a pony, a small, red chestnut pony coming to this place. And she was so aggressive, and no matter what people tried to do to her, to make her as they said, respect people. And it’s interesting how we would choose to use the term respect. By hitting her and making her frightened and she refused. She was just constantly fighting back. And if they tried to give her sweets or treats or whatever, she would just bite people and not take it. And she had this what I can see now was a very, very healthy sense of integrity, which she wasn’t supposed to have because she was a horse, right? So she wouldn’t have a voice anyway. And something in her unbreakable spirit really fascinated me. And it terrified me too, because I didn’t know how to reach out to her, I could see that if you got close to her, she would bite and kick, and I was afraid of that. So I was standing outside of her stable, and, and when I was standing outside of her stable, just looking at her in innocence of curiosity, I guess I’ve been thinking about this over and over trying to what actually happened that day, I think what pulled me to her was was a longing – a longing outside of – I was 11 years old, I wouldn’t be able to phrase it – but a longing to get out of my isolation of only being able to experience the world from my own perspective. Basically, being locked up inside my own emotions, there is a horse here that once explained that emotions is something we experience inside. Compassion is something we experience in the opening between individuals. So for as long as we are locked in, we are also overwhelmed by all sorts of things. And I guess that I had an underlying yearning to get out of that state. And I looked at this pony, and she looked at me. And I would say that the way we define ourselves would be through through a knowledge of identity. I know my name, I know what I’m good at, I know where I was born. And all of that becomes true, because I keep repeating it, like I keep weaving this web, that becomes the story of myself, and it becomes my own reality. And in a way, a kind of sanity, because I know where I begin and end and when the other one begins and ends. But in this meeting, for reasons, I would probably never know, this, this difference – this – this wall, this invisible wall between us was was taken off. And we ended up in the same sense of, of self for the same – I didn’t believe that I was her. I knew that I was Emilie. But we were sharing the same consciousness in that moment, which meant that I felt what she felt, immediately, there was no time difference. Because in a conversation like we are having now, I will have to explain what I feel inside of me because you wouldn’t know that. So I have to find it, express it and send it over to you. And hopefully, you will be able to receive it, and then you will do the same. But we still have this gap between us. And it was like this gap was taken away. So what she felt sensed, all of that would become one full experience that I would share in the moment it happened to her, which means that she would also share exactly what I felt and experienced inside of, of her being. So you could say that we become each other but we don’t lose ourselves. I think when I’ve been thinking about it later, I think it is an expansion of the self so that the idea of the self is no longer limited to only hold me as a concept. So in that way, you couldn’t really call it a conversation. I guess it’s not telepathy to me because telepathy would be the same thing as talking but with thoughts, but we’re not tossing anything across this gap anymore. We are totally sharing it something happens with the concept of time.

Rick Archer: Remember Star Trek, they had the concept of mind melding?

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah.

Rick Archer: Star Trek

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah, they were onto something, right?

Rick Archer:  Yeah.

Emelie Cajsdotter: So when I experienced this with her, I felt this very, almost bottomless feeling of powerlessness. Because no matter how high she would scream, nobody would ever hear her. And that sense of of being isolated that you really can’t reach the outside world because you’re an object when you’re a horse you’re not an equal you’re not a you’re not valued as an as an equal living being. You’re you’re an object. You’re, you’re a riding school horse, you’re supposed to deliver something. And if you can’t deliver you’re being switched to someone else. There is no real value in in your essence of being and the sadness in that was almost unbearable, and it scared me. And that sense of of shame and low self confidence was also inside of me. So as the door opened to see her, I could also no longer escape from facing myself. So to me it was like a swinging door. It goes both ways. You can’t meet someone else, unless you are totally open to be seen yourself. You can’t hide behind something. You cannot change. You cannot control what comes out. Because you – it’s your entire being that goes into that meeting.

Rick Archer: Interesting. Yeah.

Emelie Cajsdotter: And after that reality never really became normal again, it was like this this door is like that with some experiences they even if you have to in spiritual life, you have to keep repeating your practice, because you all the time, fall out of it. Right. But still with that, there are some things that happens that there’s no turning back anymore. It happened and it changed you for good.

Rick Archer: Yeah, you told me before we started recording that. Sometimes when you give talks, people ask if you can turn this on and off.

Emelie Cajsdotter: It’s It’s fascinating. And I understand from the questions that people want the answer that you can turn it off, because it would be less scary to open this door, if you can go back to hiding again. But of course you can’t. Either you do feel what the other one feel? Or you don’t. There is no turning off button. But there is there is the sense of integrity. It’s like, we can both speak English. So we can choose to talk to each other we could choose not to it’s an option we have. And it’s the same with this kind of a meeting. You choose to go in and out of it. But you don’t close off the ability.  So So if I go to places where where animals or other spaces suffer a lot, I have to choose for myself, is it? what is the point in me going there? Is there? Is there a point in sharing the suffering? Will it help?

Rick Archer: Yeah. That you do?

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah? Or will will I just be dragged into the suffering to the point of actually not being very helpful, and maybe it will prevent me from doing some other things that I could be doing?

Rick Archer: Yeah.

Emelie Cajsdotter: So I would have to make that choice rather than choosing to turn it off, which which I can’t, obviously,

Rick Archer: Here’s an interesting paragraph that I copied from your book, he said, “for a herd animal like a horse, it’s an improbable thought that someone would deliberately make a decision that is not based on the greater good of the entire herd, because that’s the way horses behave among themselves, or which would in any way be harmful to the surrounding environment. If people’s will is limited to simply achieving personal gain, the purpose becomes impossible to understand. And that seems to be the reason why so many horses and other herd animals seen from our perspective, respond so “well” to manipulation, they trust that what we want is in their best interest.

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah. Yeah, it’s, I think the whole idea of personal gain really becomes a question here. Because we presume that everyone has that. Because in in our isolation, I had the horses here explaining just recently that all different species experienced this life differently. Because we have different senses, we have different bodies. If you take all the variety of plants, trees, animals, it will all be very different. But we all relate to the same reality. It’s like we are showing angles of that reality. While humans, we have something extra to that, which means that we are also an angle of that reality. But we also interpret what we experience, which means that we experience it, and then we have an opinion about what we experience. And that takes us away from from the common reality. And perhaps that gap that was lifted between me and this pony is somewhere there. Which means that that I can actually as a human being experience, if I do something that is harmful for someone else, perhaps I will not feel that. Perhaps I can only feel what it does to me. If the horse jumps a fence, and I enjoy that, I will immediately think that the horse enjoys it too, because that’s the only feeling I get there because I don’t really share the horses experience. It’s like if you started to cry, my mirror neurons would react to your tears and I would think something, but that’s not the same as me feeling what you actually go through inside. There is this difference. And, and if the self – like one horse explained – if the self is not –  if the self would be the combination of body and soul, the merging of body and soul, we tend to see that as some as like a dot. But what if you would see it as a swelling balloon so that the self is just what actually harbors the world inside of you? And then, if you’re a herd animal, it means that you will know yourself as a separate being with integrity, but you would also feel the others inside of you. Meaning that if another herd member is harmed in some way, you would feel that inside of you, which means that there would be no reason for you to harm another individual, deliberately in that way, because you would feel it inside of you, and you wouldn’t get the sense of personal gain.

Rick Archer: Are you saying that that’s the way horses tend to function? Ordinarily,

Emelie Cajsdotter: it seems to be that way they function ordinarily.

Rick Archer: But they are right. I mean, they might bite each other kick each other.

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah, they do.

Rick Archer: But don’t they feel what the other horse is feeling. If they do that?

Emelie Cajsdotter: They do. It’s just if you’re a horse being bitten by another horse, it doesn’t feel like it does when they bite you and me, because they have a different skin and a different body. But if you form your herds, because that was the question when I started to work with this, and my work is to go around and meet animals and, and try to figure out solutions to issues of all sorts of situations. And people want to know, who is the leader? And I started to try to figure out who is the leader? And I never got an answer. Well, I got an answer, but not to the leadership question. I got an answer, describing every individual in the herd, quite detailed with focus on what they’re good at, what do they contribute with. And in order to find out who you are and what you can contribute with, you have to test yourself. And you have to test yourself quite roughly, we know that we know that our best friends are the ones that has really been through the toughest times with us. And they stayed there, we’ve tested each other, perhaps not by pushing ourselves into walls. But when we know that I know the strength of my friend because we went through something. And it seems to be the same for them.

Rick Archer: Yeah, here’s something from your book, you say; horses confront one another in order to find out which one is most suited to each particular task. Different responsibilities horses serve in a herd might include defender, scout, caretaker, educator, and so on. So they kind of learn about themselves through this sort of friction or confrontation with each other. And then they naturally serve different functions. And there was a fascinating bit in your book where different horses would would serve in the prime leadership role, depending upon what the need was, sometimes it would be looking for food, sometimes it would be defend defending the herd, you know, sometimes it would be educating the young or whatever. So that was all very fascinating.

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah, and I think also, because humans seem to be the only species that truly relate to time as a linear experience, which means that we are comparing everything to everything else, one by one, naturally, we put them below and above each other, which means that we do add a sense of evaluation to that. If you have a nonlinear time, that will be totally different. Because then it’s much easier to accept, it seems that everything is constantly changing. So you have someone who has a very good eyesight, perhaps in the herd, but then the sun goes down, and darkness comes. And then there is someone else who has a bit of better vision in dark. And so it goes on someone dies, someone is born, someone is injured, they are constantly adapting to the situation. While we seem to seek leadership for the sake of having a leader, that seems to only work in a linear timeframe, where we experienced personal gain. If you have a nonlinear time, and personal gain is no longer relevant, since you feel what everyone else is feeling, then what is good for you, and what is also adding to the greater good is no longer in conflict. It’s like if you are a very good scout, meaning that you embody what is happening outside of the herd, you actually that that makes the room bigger. So the one who is a defender or whatever you choose to call them, they can also become better at what they do. Because we’ve raised the ceiling for that. We don’t compete within the herd about the same position. And I think that is a huge difference to how we build our societies and how we miss out on so many resources, because we don’t we don’t know where to put them right. And we push each other down in order to make a career which is Yeah, it’s a waste of time in a way if you think about it that way.

Rick Archer: Horses sound like the ideal communists: “from each according to his ability to each according to his need”.

Emelie Cajsdotter: But except that there is no elite,

Rick Archer: Right? There’s no elite, which there shouldn’t have been an ideal communism either. But obviously there was because human beings are screwed up. But do you think that humans could ever sort of emulate horses and actually begin to function in a much more egalitarian way the way they do?

Emelie Cajsdotter: I think we could. But I think the way to get there has to go through – and that’s, I guess, where we meet, it has to go through a spiritual self knowledge in a way that there is a point where it can not only be psychological what happened between me and this pony was more than anything, a spiritual turning point, I think, because it’s – there was a pony here describing the human being, as there was an image because, when I experienced this, it’s an image with a full experience of it, feeling sensation, you name it, so that the image is of a human being standing, and half of the person is black. And black is not a negative here, is just black, it means it’s filled. It’s the physical human being. And in order to fulfill our physical part of the self, we need to accept reality for what it is, we have to try to stop deceiving ourselves, and make all these images and identities. Right? And the other side that we long for, and that we need as much as that is the invisible side, the other half that is white, and actually, perhaps not white, but rather see through is our longing for all of these things that we cannot phrase describe the Creator, perhaps, the threads in between the longing to fully experience this life, because it’s all we have, no matter what we think, or what theories we have.

Rick Archer: You just said – reminds me of – Oh, I’m sorry, continue.

Emelie Cajsdotter: And then she described, the role of the human being in this universe would be to be exactly in the middle between the physical and the spiritual. But we have misunderstood it. So we don’t put ourselves in the middle of we put ourselves in the center. And when we put ourselves in the center, then you have all the experience of the human ego. And then we are totally locked in ourselves. So it seems when you follow spirituality, described by animals, you all the time get to these parallel things, the self being an opening, an emptiness, that is an opening, that can contain the entire world. But we can only do that, if we empty ourselves of ourselves, but not by getting rid of the self. Because then there will be no one there to receive the world. Right?

Rick Archer: Right. So when you say not, by getting rid of the self, you mean you can’t be utterly devoid of a sense of personhood or individuality there has to be at least some remnant of that in order to

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes, and that that personality or essence, they will describe it as when body and soul merge something totally unique is being created, because nothing that is born is ever the same again, not totally. Whether you’re a plant coming out of a seed, or or a human being born, or chicken coming out of an egg, you are unique, and your interpretation of that life will only happen once so, so the personality is a celebration of this life, it’s not something we should get rid of, but when we I, when we build an identity, in that, that is that is something different because then the emptiness is no longer an opening, then the emptiness actually is empty, and there is no space for anything in it. So the ego would perhaps then be there, the person will create in order to fit into this world, they, they will describe it as the self in order for us to really become who we are in this and contribute in this life. We need to be seen we need to be met by other individuals we need to be mirrored by the life we come into. But if the people who receive us, our family, anyone around us can’t see who we really are underneath and meet us in that in that true point of ourselves, then we will start creating what the world wants us to be because otherwise we can’t see how we would ever survive. And the person we create in order to survive becomes the ego who is constantly dying, because there is no connection between the ego and the soul. So the soul has no sense of eternity and is struggling to survive by the minute, and needs constant food, which you can see we consume this planet, we eat ourselves through this planet, like no other species does. Because the ego, the need of the ego to survive is endless. While the self only wants to get closer to life, the self is looking for a relation to life, not the confirmation.

Rick Archer: This is great, Emelie, I love the way you speak about it reminds me of what you’re saying just now reminds me of a quote I lifted from your book, which is that “only by living your life to the fullest is it possible to reach beyond physical existence, the way to eternity goes through the heart, the place where the body and consciousness meet.” And what you’re saying about ego, is there’s a lot of people in spiritual circles talking about eradicating the ego and not having a person there being absolutely no person, and, and so on and so forth. And I always recoil against that I am more aligned with what you were saying, which is that the ego has usurped its proper role, and has become kind of bloated and exaggerated and is thereby causing a whole lot of trouble. But you can’t utterly live without it. It just has to be relegated to its proper role, which is kind of like in the backseat in a way. Well, while the self or the higher consciousness drives the car.

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes, I’m by constant practice, I guess, because what happens is that the ego will creep up. We will never finish in our practice.

Rick Archer: Yeah

Emelie Cajsdotter: It’s every morning every day, we will forget as we practice. I remember when I was working in Jordan, and they have different stable managers. And at this particular time, it was a very, very religious man, and very, very true to himself in how we follow that path. I really admired him for that. And he had everything in order all the time. And I admire that too, because my life tends to be very messy. And he was sitting in his office, and on that day, his hair was standing out and, and his desk was really not looking like it usually did. So I thought there must have been some accidents. It’s like, what happened to you today? And isn’t? Well, Emelie, you know, the ego, the ego, it’s every minute. It’s every minute of every day. And it was really helpful for me to see that even this man who was so disciplined in his practice, that his struggle was just like mine. It’s very refreshing, in a way.

Rick Archer: Yeah, constant vigilance is necessary. So yes, if teacher named Papaji, and someone wants to ask him, you know, do you have to be, continue to be vigilant, and he said, you know, “till my dying breath”. And it reminds me of an article that I just listened to and read both twice recently by a fellow I interviewed about 10 years ago named Jerry Freeman. And the article is called “Why there are no perfect teachers”. And then since fresh in my mind, I think I’m gonna go and I’m going to create a link to that on Jerry Freeman’s BatGap page. So if anyone would like to read that article, go to Jerry Freeman on batgap, and you’ll see a link, I’m gonna put it there after this interview. But anyway, Jerry is talking a lot about this, and how it’s necessary to have some vestige of ego, or a sense of personal self in order to function as long as we’re alive. But how it gets out of whack and, you know, gets – oversteps its normal processes and becomes too dominant. And that’s what’s causing so much trouble. But he also talks about how there can be spiritual awakening to quite a profound degree, but a whole lot of stuff that we haven’t worked out yet. And so we should never consider ourselves to be finished, we should also always consider ourselves to be a work in progress.

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes, and also, what I find the more I work with animals in this from this aspect is that they often come to describe how important it is. And it’s like you say, to be able to differentiate between what is eternal, and what is tangible and changeable. And the only eternal thing would be basically the possibility of life meaning, the essence of the soul, the possibility of breath coming into material, which then creates life, everything else is basically tangible. And when humans talk about the subject, we again, because we evaluate things all the time, we tend to like the eternal a little bit more. It’s like it has a better value because it’s lasting, and the other things are not lasting. So they’re perhaps not as valuable. But when you discuss this with animals, this seemed to be the other way around. You have to figure out the difference so that your starting point is in the eternal, it’s like you say, your starting point, your identification with who you are, shouldn’t be in the tangible because it’s very scary, very confusing. Because there’s nothing to hold on to, if you have something to hold on to that helps. And the only thing you can hold on to is the soul basically. But apart from that, they love the tangible because that’s all we have. If you only have this short lifetime, why don’t you just dive into it and experience it? And then it’s like, another difference is people all the time look for the meaning of life and animals and other species, they seem to almost get offended by it. It’s like, what do you want something outside of this? Is this not enough for you? You want another meaning outside of that this life is even possible. And even what I would say animals that are completely awake, like they’ve gone through spiritual awakening, like humans tend to think that only humans do. They can also describe that forgetfulness as a gift. The fact that perhaps you are born again, and you forget all about it, or most about it anyway, makes you, you put you into situation that you can rediscover life, you can rediscover God. It is this love of the physical life that I find very refreshing. Because to me, some spiritual practices with humans is turning away from life. It’s like we want to be finished. We want to stop the cycling and but I meet enlightened individuals of other species that jump straight back into life. I remember one horse, when he was dying, I was with him when he was dying. And he was just longing to get another body. He was hoping to get another body and he was like, I don’t care what you give me. If it’s a short or long life, if it’s hardship or easy, I just want to get in there again. And it’s this this love for existence. I miss that sometimes in the human concepts.

Rick Archer: Interesting. There’s, since this article by Jerry Freeman is frustrated by there’s a point that relates to what you were just saying, which is that in the Brahma sutras, it’s discussed that there’s a thing called lesh avidya, which means faint remains of ignorance. And it’s discussed that that the ignorance which remains is actually a tool for greater Enlightenment and even in unity consciousness. It can be broken into pieces, and those pieces become the the means or the fuel through which Brahman a greater reality is realized. So life is not some mistake that we’ve the whole universe is somehow fallen into, and we should just get out of and be rid of as quickly as possible. It’s a tremendous opportunity, like you say, and there is an unimaginable scope of possibility. Which can be realized if we just, you know, engage in the game from the proper perspective and not try to just escape from it ASAP.

Emelie Cajsdotter: And I’m saying it as something like a riddle that we’re meant to solve. And then we’ve solved it, and then what?

Rick Archer: Keeps on going. So there’s a couple of themes here that come up again, that your whole teaching and your book is based upon, that I want to explore with you. One is the idea that animals can get enlightened because I have this bias going back decades that they can’t, and I’m willing, and eager to re-examine that. And another is the just the sophistication of some of these animals thought processes that you communicate with. I mean, some of them in some of the passages in your book, they were saying things that I had to really put on my thinking cap to understand what you were saying, topical insights and everything. And I think, Okay, wait a minute. Now, horses and other animals don’t even have a prefrontal cortex, which is, which we’re told is that tool that enables humans to think in sophisticated ways that other animals don’t have? And so how are they thinking these thoughts? And is it because it’s the higher self of the animal that has all this wisdom? And somehow, they don’t have the neurophysiology to articulate it, which we do. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have access to that kind of wisdom.

Emelie Cajsdotter: Well, I’ve asked myself all these questions, too, because I started off believing that humans are the only ones with an abstract ability to think. And every time I think I know something, I’m proven wrong. So, I guess they will continue on once beyond this interview, of course. But I guess it’s where we put the consciousness and some animals describe the consciousness as the bridge between the physical existence and the soul. The possibility for materia to become aware of itself. And if it is, so we’ll just play with that thought. If that is so then perhaps everything that is alive knows that it’s alive, that if you are alive, if being alive means that soul has entered materia. And that can only happen if there is consciousness connecting them, that could possibly mean that everything that is alive, knows that it’s alive, which means that we have a conscious expression of our experience of life constantly, no matter what we are. But I think as humans, what we have done with our gap and our personal gain, and all of the things we discussed in the beginning, is that we, we are doing what we’ve also done to other human beings, we take away their, their person, we depersonalized them, and then we take what we want. So if black people don’t feel anything, then we can use them as slaves, right? I mean, we believe that the children couldn’t feel pain not long ago.

Rick Archer: Yeah, sure. I mean, I think it was Descartes who popularized the notion that animals are just machines, and they don’t even have consciousness and they don’t feel pain. And the noises they make if we inflict pain upon them are just some like mechanical thing going on.

Emelie Cajsdotter: And that is that makes it easier for us to take what we want if our ego needs constant food. That’s the way of doing it. Right.

Rick Archer: Yeah, I mean, the Nazis and also like in the conflict in Rwanda, they were referring to people as cockroaches. So you can do whatever you want, because it’s just like a cockroach.

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah. And the scary thing is that we are able to do that to ourselves. So I guess, the way back is to, again, meet everyone in person. It’s like, okay, this tree is a person, this tuft of grass is a person. It’s not a human, but it is someone. And perhaps that someone doesn’t have a nervous system, like the tree, it doesn’t mean that the trees experience of life is limited. The experience can be deeply philosophical, devoted and religious. But the tree would not be able to phrase it. Because the tree wouldn’t have the need to phrase it because the tree constantly is in this experience, most likely in connection to other trees. And where do one tree begin? And how is the soul and consciousness in plants? That’s another fascinating question. So if, if you let a seed down, and that seeds become another tree, from which point are the two of you being isolated? Is it different souls in these two trees? Is it different consciousness? Or what? Is even the question relevant?

Rick Archer: My guess is that it would be different souls superficially, and one soul fundamentally, just the way on the ocean, you have different waves on superficially, but it’s all really the same ocean if you go a little deeper.

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah. So anyway, we have this common consciousness, and we have the individual and we have the individual person that could experience all these things that are written about in this book, I am the one putting words on it, to the experience of sharing that instant now with another species. And then of course, it’s like a conversation between you and me; we meet tonight, because we are very interested in spiritual philosophical questions. Naturally, when we talk to each other, that’s what we’re gonna talk about, even if it wasn’t a job, right? And it’s the same with me and the tree because I am so interested in life and existence and spiritual matters, and human and all of these things, that that will come up in the conversation most likely. Of course, not every animal or plant is interested in what I’m interested in. But sometimes you meet a kindred spirit than regardless of what species that is, there will be creativity in that meeting point. It’s like there are horses in the herd that for lack of a better word, because I know that the minute you put a word on someone’s role in a heard, you’ve fixated it, and it’s not good, because you create an identity and it’s not what we want. But I tend to call them memory carriers. And I met them at first in Jordan, where an old mare was close to pass over to the other side, and she was sharing her time with another mare. And they were passing on something and I thought that the memory carrier, knowing the history of her herd and her species, kept all that in her mind, and that she had to teach the other horse all of these things. So the other horse would also remember it. And they tried to explain to me that the stories only appear in the moment of sharing. It’s not that the individual continuously remembers them, like a computer, they only become alive when we truly meet each other. So – Who does the story belong to? If I meet a tree and an experience this deep philosophical conversation? Was it in the tree before and recorded into me? Or did it happen because we met because we share, something happens when our consciousness are meeting in the same point. But I think that the need to put it into an explanation, that would be a human need, that there is no need for the tree. But I believe that the trees still experienced something very valuable in the moment of sharing, not in the explanation.

Rick Archer: If I meet somebody that I went to high school with, we might all of a sudden start having all these discussions about things we experienced in high school, which both of us have forgotten about for 50 something years. Isn’t that? Is that what you’re saying? But then those memories come up because it’s relevant to our particular interaction?

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes, I guess it could be like that. Yes, definitely. Because we, we cross paths. I have a pony at home. And she describes time, as you know, as yarn, but not put together neatly. It’s a mess, like a completely mess, as a tangled, messy yarn. So because time, when we think about it as parallel, we tend to think like, like this neat little lines that as if we would stack books on top of each other. So that’s not how time acts, it comes and goes and in meets it, it keeps meeting itself in all these variety of angles. There is a chronological time, represented by the thread itself, but the way it meets itself is actually totally irregular. And I like that thought, because it means that we are not just sort of puppets controlled by destiny, it matters what we do when we enter time. And we have choices. But it seems like all other species have it too. And we’re missing out. Because for some reason, we believe that we are the only ones that go through these developments. We seem to be the most isolated species, in the sense that we create an identity that is very clear. It’s like for me as a human being, it’s very obvious when I am dead. And when I am alive, there’s no doubt about that. You weren’t born, but one minute later you are then you are alive, and then you’re not. And for other spaces, it seems to be a lot more floating, how you come and go. What’s your identity, the identity is it’s like: “Yes, I identify with myself, but I also carry the herd”. If I am a plant, and I decay, I die, partly perhaps. And then I turn into my body turn into something else. And I am aware of that. So I think in our isolation, we miss out on so many dimensions of life. And to me that the spiritual path is, is more about being able to truly appreciate this life, more than reaching something outside of it. Really. Because we live inside of the Creator in a way.

Rick Archer: Yeah, I was a student of a famous spiritual teacher one time he said to me, he said “every day is life”. He said: “Don’t pass over the present for some glorious future”.

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah, exactly.

Rick Archer: So what you’re saying then about plants and animals is that, if I’ve interpreted it correctly, is that they’re more tuned into the collective first of all, of their herd, of their species, of the forest, or whatever. And also, they’re more tuned into that level of life which is more fundamental than the comings and goings of individual bodies, so that the death of the body is not as big a deal to them as it is to someone who is tightly identified with their individuality and unaware of the more universal nature.

Emelie Cajsdotter: It seems to be like that it seems to for us, perhaps not our our opinion of death. But our fear of dying is that it’s a kind of extinction to us.

Rick Archer: Yeah, people feel because they think this is what I am. I’m nothing more than this. And this dies. I’m done.

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah. And everything is done, because there’s nothing that can no longer relate to anything. So it’s the end of all things in a way. But if you are aware of the cycle of the body, because I mean, the body will incarnate as Well. I mean, it’s the same molecules going, Yeah, creating another body,

Rick Archer: we actually have molecules and atoms in our bodies that were in Jesus’s body and Buddha’s body. And yeah, you know,

Emelie Cajsdotter: We’re very grateful for those.

Rick Archer: But not necessarily Elvis Presley, because he was too recent, so there hasn’t been time for the molecules to circulate around.

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah, that’s a gift for someone else.

Rick Archer: Yeah right.

Emelie Cajsdotter: But also, it seems to me that the experience of life itself. To us death, it’s outside of life, in a way, but when, because it is outside of time. And animals seems to agree that death is outside of time. I mean, they taught me that it’s not my idea. But it’s not the end of the journey to them.

Rick Archer: No, nor is it for us. But we just don’t realize it a lot of us. Now this thing about hierarchies. I want to see if I can get you to agree that there are hierarchies. But there aren’t hierarchies. And let me explain what I mean by that. So maybe I can’t, but let’s say one of your horses has intestinal parasites. And so you give it ivermectin or whatever is used to treat intestinal parasites and your intention is to kill the parasites, because you consider the horse to be more valuable than the parasites which are living in its intestines. Right? So there’s some kind of value judgment there horse is more important than parasites, let’s kill the parasites. It wouldn’t that imply a hierarchy?

Emelie Cajsdotter: I would have thought the way you described it a while ago. Now the horses are beginning to teach us so much about how the grazing animals relate to grass and the ground and their microbes underneath the soil. That we are actually not using these deworming things anymore. Because we don’t want to cut that cycle. We’re trying to find other solutions.

Rick Archer: Natural, more natural ones.

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes. And also it’s it becomes a problem. I mean, horses are meant to have a certain amount f parasites to actually keep balanced, but not too many. The reason why they become too many, it’s actually because we are destroying the land, the way we treat the land. And the way we put too many horses in the same paddocks are not in in tuned with all the other species.  So let’s say the horses couldn’t exist without the parasites. So at this point, there is there is a change in me in that particular area at the moment.

Rick Archer: Yeah. All right. Well, let’s say another example. Okay, mosquitoes spread malaria. And so we don’t want children to die of malaria. So we kill the mosquitoes, as many as we can get mosquito nets, to starve the mosquitoes if necessary. So they won’t suck blood out of the children and give them malaria. So we’re valuing the children above the mosquitoes. So there’s, again, some kind of hierarchical judgment there.

Emelie Cajsdotter: I’m not sure I would call it hierarchal. But I see what you mean. I’m thinking that for everyone who is alive. Again, we speak about appreciating life, and how that is also perhaps the center of the spiritual quest in a way because it leads us back to life. Everything that is alive will try to survive. I mean, a horse that will be attacked by a mountain lion will try to survive until the very, very end, the mountain lion will try to to kill the horse in order to survive and risk its own life to feed its own children. We are all designed to do what we need to do in order to survive. But is that a sign of cruelty? Or is there a deeper balance in the system? So of course, if a mosquito would kill my child, I would I would kill the mosquito to save my child because it will be a natural instinct to preserve life. It doesn’t necessarily mean that I think my child is more valuable than than the mosquito. But it is my instinct to do so. And it’s the love for my child and the fear of what will happen if I lose this child, of course also the more selfish part. The mosquito will do the same from the mosquitoes angle, because that’s what we are designed to do. And if this happens in a balance, I mean that the animals chasing the horses will make them run in a particular way that is actually good for the grass. When we keep horses separate, and we try to protect them from everything, it changes their pattern of grazing, so they become sick and the pastures become sick. So we had to figure out systems, how we can actually make them run. And I wouldn’t say that we frighten them, because we don’t want to cause anything negative, but we do need to get them stressed and excited to the point of recreating how they’re supposed to move, because otherwise they don’t stay healthy. So I guess we are designed to meet in this place of life and death in interaction between bodies. If that becomes cruel, or creates suffering, and as it will, at times, but perhaps it doesn’t necessarily have to be. I don’t think it’s possible to live a life without pain, but when we move towards suffering, then it’s more of a question how we look at it, I suppose. Pain, I think is inevitable. I don’t need to dislike the mosquito, I don’t need to hate the mosquito, I will do what I’m designed to do, for my species to survive, as with the others. But I think when we have this gap to all the other species, we are losing a sense of value, and a sense of self respect. So we have a short sightedness in our way of interacting that other species obviously don’t have, because they are not destroying the planet the way we do.

Rick Archer: I totally agree. And there’s some kind of balance point in here I’m trying to find. So obviously, we’re in the midst of the sixth great mass extinction and hundreds of species go extinct just about every day. There’s just been a huge reduction in wildlife populations over the last decades, and it seems to be accelerating, and I mean, we’re cutting down the rainforests in Indonesia, to plant palm trees to get palm oil. And it’s, it’s eradicating this habitat of the orangutans and, and so on. So there’s this human hubris and egotism and greed and sense of superiority that makes us feel that these other species are disposable. And you know, we can dispose of them in order to gain some economic advantage. And that obviously, that is terrible, and it’s destroying the world. Now, holding that thought in mind, can we also think that – well, there are levels of complexity in nervous systems and levels of sophistication of function, and I’d rather be a human being than than a mosquito, because it’s higher up the biological evolutionary scale, and possibly the spiritual evolutionary scale, if we define that as the ability to cognize and embody pure consciousness, and, you know, express it and live it in daily life.

Emelie Cajsdotter: You know, I would say that as a circle more, it’s like, if you have a herd of horses, you could see that there is one horse that none of the other horses can move around. Almost none. And then there is one that perhaps most of the horses can shift around, but can bet on it. If the if the herd is big enough, the area’s big enough. And their way of expressing natural life is big enough. That the one that everyone else is shifting around is the only one that can move the one horse that no one else can move. This, it always becomes a circle in the end.

Rick Archer: Moving means like the horse that can’t be moved is just sort of stubborn and strong.

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes exactly yeah,

Rick Archer: No one can tell him what to do.

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah, no one can shift his place

Rick Archer: The other guy everybody can push him around.

Emelie Cajsdotter: So yeah. And then it makes you confused, because it’s like, but Why can he because we again, we look for a line. And I think a hierarchy is an expression of a line and when you bring it into a circle, it becomes confusing. So okay- yes, we are definitely one of the most complex individuals on the planet. Is that good or bad? Or is it just complex?

Rick Archer: Well, the whole universe has grown from simplicity to complexity over the past 13.7 billion years.

Emelie Cajsdotter: Absolutely

Rick Archer: It seems direction of evolution.

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes. And you can you can experience it as an evolution because if life is so hungry, in wanting to experience itself, it will keep creating more and more complexity in order for more diversity, that will be natural. But do we need to put it on a scale? Or can the experience of being a mosquito be as fulfilling, and spiritually fulfilling, even if the mosquito wouldn’t express it? Because I’m I contain all these microbes is a bacteria as someone, I wouldn’t be able to answer that question. But what am I actually containing? Am I really just one person? I mean, can we, I don’t have an answer to that I just like to disturb my thoughts a little bit.

Rick Archer: For all conglomerates, I mean, we can each contain, you know, 40 to 100 trillion cells, but most of them aren’t human, because the microbiome is all these non human cells, and we can’t live without it. And so it’s important, obviously.

Emelie Cajsdotter: And how does it affect the consciousness, if a tree or a plant or an insect can have equal to me as a human complex and a spiritual experience of awakening, then perhaps that is not tied to the complexity in itself, our ability to explain it and to share it and to create art would be different. And I think, again, like we say that the humans have this interpretation, and it makes us isolated. And we’ve seen the negative effects of that quite strongly on the planet bit, all of those things you’ve just said. But what if there is also a positive aspect to that? what if we can actually add things to this creation, I still wouldn’t say that it would make us better or more evolved, it’s just a typically humans thing. Perhaps we could use that as a creativity. But it wouldn’t be creative unless we have opened the self to include the rest of the world, it will only be creative when we are no longer ruled by the ego, or no longer ruled by personal gain. For as long as as we are tempted by personal gain, the gap between us and the rest of the world will sadly, I think, be destructive. The good thing is that it’s possible for us to open up ourselves and our Selves to include the rest of the reality. And then we would no longer be so destructive, because we we wouldn’t be drawn to that. I remember once, in one of the classes we had in the school that is run by horses, because they give us all the exercises. And this was an early, it was about this time of the year or beginning of April, and in Sweden, it’s cold. And we were supposed to to connect with insects. We were gathering early in the morning in a forest and it was foggy and rainy, and dull and gray. And we were supposed to meet insects. And I was thinking, I must have missed something in this conversation. Because it’s too cold. There are no insects. But I don’t want to go against the idea of the horses because I trust them to see the entirety better than what I do. Just like we better follow their path. Because we’ve let humans decide and be the boss for long enough and we we’ve seen where that took us. So let’s try another version. So we all gathered in the forest and waiting for insects to come out. And after like about two hours. I saw this tiny fly. I don’t know what you call them in English and Swedish we call them “knott”. They’re tiny.

Rick Archer: Maybe a gnat. We have gnats.

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes, it will be that. And normally, they really they annoy you because they bite and it burns and they’re in the way and you just want to disappear. Right?

Rick Archer: Yeah.

Emelie Cajsdotter: But now after waiting for one for two hours, and connecting to this tiny flying dot, which was one of the most fascinating things I’ve ever done, and how an entire person can fit into that tiny body and have a full experience of life and knowing the Creator in doing so. I mean, I will never forget it and and then I was thinking. Well, so if we were truly connected to this planet, we wouldn’t need almost anything to be fascinated by life. I mean, we really don’t need to be so hungry for all these spectacular experiences. If we truly connect to the rest of the life on this planet, in a way, that’s all we need. So we wouldn’t naturally not be so destructive, because we wouldn’t all the time look for things outside of ourselves. It’s all inside of ourselves. Truly.

Rick Archer: Yeah, I guess we’re I’m skeptical and I don’t know if you’re gonna be able to convince me in this conversation.

Emelie Cajsdotter: I have no need to convince you. So that’s fine with me.

Rick Archer: I know. Yes. It’s fun to talk about it, is just that, you know, the idea that a gnat can have an experience that’s as rich and full as a human being can have given the gnat’s, you know, extremely limited the nervous system and sensory capabilities. I mean, obviously there are all kinds of animals that have more sensory perception than we do bats and dogs, you know, all kinds of animals can perceive things we can’t perceive. But in terms of being able to know oneself as one with God, consciously the way you know, an enlightened being or enlightened Saint can do, I’m just a little skeptical there.

Emelie Cajsdotter: I understand that and I totally respect that. I think, from the gnat’s point of view, that’s the starting point. I think they never really left the Creator. Which means that the journey, we’re speaking about Enlightenment as as a journey, from being unaware, to becoming aware, and to find the invisible, because the invisible and the eternal, and the tangible they’re disconnected to us. So we need to reconnect them, we need to find someone if that consciousness is the bridge, between between the soul and the body, we need to find someone who can walk that distance. And the one who walks that distance, it’s quite important that he doesn’t fall asleep on the way because then we have to start all over again, which we do daily, because we constantly fall asleep, right? What if you never fell asleep? Then you wouldn’t know anything else? And it wouldn’t really be a journey. What if the rest of the planet is already there, and the ones doing the journey is us. So when we walk, that distance, we enter into the life where we’re everyone already is, and they are actually receiving us. And they seem to be happy, they seem to want us to come and join the party. Even with all our destructiveness and all the suffering that we keep creating, they seem to really welcome us and help us along the way. So if we saw them as never disconnected, we wouldn’t need to believe it to be true or not, or to be able to explain it or not. But what if we just gave that a chance? We could learn so much from other species that we have no idea that we could because we just presume that they would have nothing to say in the matter.

Rick Archer: Yeah. Well, species certainly have a lot to say, I mean, judging from your book.

Emelie Cajsdotter: It’s just me that can’t be quiet.

Rick Archer: You’re doing great. But um, I believe this is what Ken Wilber calls the “pre trans fallacy”, which is that there are certain characteristics of “more primitive life forms” like gnats, that seem similar to supposed characteristics of enlightened beings, they’re completely in tune with nature, they’re completely spontaneous. They’re just acting on natural instinct and doing exactly what they’re supposed to do, given their role in life, and so on. And those things can all be said of someone who’s enlightened. The messy part is unenlightened people who are in the middle who have freewill, who have lost the connection with nature, and haven’t regained it in a deeper sense in terms of being becoming consciously aware of the Godhead, of pure consciousness, and then having their life completely in the flow of that cosmic intelligence. And so then we create all kinds of trouble. I mean, the world would be just fine. If there were no humans, and it were all just all the animals doing their thing. And the world would also be fine if there were only enlightened people and animals, but, you know, there’s no people to cause all the problems we cause. The problems arise when we’re in this teenage phase as a species, and we’re exercising our freewill but without the the requisite wisdom to exercise it wisely.

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah. I would agree with that.

Rick Archer: Okay.

Emelie Cajsdotter: But I’m also thinking that I would add than one thing to the gnat or anyone else who is just doing what they are designed to be doing. But perhaps they perhaps they know that that is what they’re doing. It doesn’t just happen, because they are designed like that. And they’re not just sort of, without really being guarded around by the Creator. Maybe they know that that is happening. And if they know that, then they can tell about that experience. And that can remind us what we are missing and it reminds me of the gap. And when I am reminded by the gap, perhaps my longing to find the Creator yet again, is becoming more awake than it was before.

Rick Archer: Yeah. Well, I would say, my spin on that would be that certainly

Emelie Cajsdotter: But the knowledge, sorry, would then not be related to the brain of the gnat. It would be the spiritual awareness of the gnat. Is the consciousness, is the consciousness tied to the brain, or is it tied to the soul? And then I’m thinking, Well, I couldn’t have had that conversation with all of these individuals if it was to the brain, because a tree wouldn’t have a brain, a tree wouldn’t have an image of the world that I could ever even relate to.

Rick Archer: Yeah,

Emelie Cajsdotter: We can still meet. And in that meeting point, perhaps a tiny bit of a translation can be passed on to me as a human, it will always be distorted in some sense, because the minute my brain knows what I’m experiencing, it’s no longer the tree, it’s me, right? So it’s basically being lost the moment it’s being found. So whatever I’m trying to put words on will always be limited. But you would still die for that glimpse, because that reality of sharing another individual’s experience of life, even if it’s just a glimpse, and that’s all you can, you can pull out and try to put words on it will still be worth it because of the the love of the creation, I suppose.

Rick Archer: Yeah. Now, I know you’ve had fairly sophisticated conversations with chickens. Have you ever had a meaningful conversation with a gnat? Or a worm or a slug? Or, you know, some much more rudimentary form? Have you?

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes. I think the limitation is with me, because when I have a conversation with with a horse or a dog, with animals that lives with people, then we have a lot of common ground. We know what it’s like to go for a walk, we know what it’s like to go for a ride, we have lots to talk about, that my brain can relate to. So my brain is really happy and respond. And I remember the first time I got in connection with an insect was in a parking lot outside of a shop, and I saw a parking lot, it would look the same to me and you. But for the insect, this experience of the parking lot, it was completely different colors that I couldn’t even relate to. It felt hilly, and it was a completely different planet. And it didn’t even know about me or humans, I realized that Okay, so I’m not at all in the center of this insects life, it’s so different to me, that it’s very hard for me to follow. So it becomes less of a conversation and more of an instinctive experience, you get this sort of experience of what it’s like to be that and then it’s gone again. And for a long time I thought that other spieces communicate in this sort of tiny dots, it took me years to realize that that; no, it’s my awareness, I fall asleep all the time! So, so all I can get glimpses because then I fall out again, and then I struggle to get in to be able to listen again. So the limitation would be mine, because I need to stretch my, my abstract ability to what cannot even be compared to the human experience. And I do that every time I experience something that is outside of my comfort zone, if you would call it that, or or what has been experienced so far, but it would take me forever. So, in this lifetime, I’m more likely to have longer conversations with animals that are less abstract to me. This is what I believe right now, anyway.

Rick Archer: Yeah, this is making more sense to me as I go along with you here. Here’s an insight that might help. So I think we probably both agree that there is universal consciousness, universal Intelligence, it permeates and orchestrates everything. Are we on the same page with that?

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah.

Rick Archer: Okay. So, that being the case, that Universal Consciousness is our very essence, Yours, Mine, the the camera, the gnat, the worm, whatever, if they are conscious, or even if they’re not conscious, that consciousness permeates them. And if they are conscious to some degree, then they are a reflector of that consciousness in a certain way, depending upon the nature of their nervous system, agreed?

Emelie Cajsdotter: And the character their personality.

Rick Archer: Yeah, which is related to the nature of their nervous system, I suppose. So, maybe like you say, with the insect, for instance, who sees the parking lot so differently, then that you can barely conceive of it. You know, and it is a conscious experience for them. They have senses. And, you know, that Universal Consciousness is it’s active in them as just as it’s active in us they wouldn’t be able to function where it not, and there’s some kind of higher value, there’s some sort of level of that consciousness, which is not just unmanifest, but is active and engaged, creative, orchestrating things, and you’re able to; you, Emelie, are able to tune into that, as it relates to, or as it interfaces with the gnat. We’re really picking on gnats in this interview.

Emelie Cajsdotter: That was unexpected, wasn’t it?

Rick Archer: Therefore, there actually can be some kind of meaningful communication. Because you’re not just communicating with the limited gnat consciousness, you’re communicating with the archetype or the Deva, you could say. You know, the word Deva, right? It’s like the spirit of the gnat kingdom. And that spirit can be quite wise and quite profound. Well, there’s a great thing in your in your thing here. This is from the Maori medicine woman, she said: “If you’re no longer able to communicate with the plants, instead reduced to having to read about their knowledge, then you should not be working with medicine”. So how do you communicate with plants? You obviously communicate with the with the Deva or the spirit of the plant in question?

Emelie Cajsdotter: I think it is the same, it is all the same idea. I think, to me, all of these individuals will still be persons individuals, as well as the common consciousness that we spoke about. There is also an individual translating it or living it, I would say, perhaps living it is a better word.

Rick Archer: You mean like an individual plan?

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes. Because otherwise, what would be the point of individuals? Why would life have this urge to experience all these different angles, because it’s becoming personalized, every tiny gnat, will still experience it slightly different from the other one, and that seems to be a sense of humor in life and the longing in life to keep re experiencing itself. With such a force that we cannot grasp it because it’s so much bigger than us. But when we don’t have an ego surrounding it, perhaps it goes through in a way easier. I’m not saying it is so but perhaps it is so. And then whatever species you communicate to would be less relevant. Because you’re still meeting someone. If it’s a plant, if it’s a tree, that the difference between a plant I think and why that’s never been so popular as animal communication, is that it’s harder for us as humans to know the form we are relating to, there is no nervous system, there is no head, there’s no feet. The whole concept of beginning and end is complicated. Because some developed because they develop longer roots, and all of a sudden there is another plant popping out of the same root. Is it two different plants? Or who am I talking to? What if it’s not really relevant, and if I let that go, and I just open myself to receive the being of this plant, and I leave my ideas and opinions aside for a moment because otherwise there is no emptiness for the plant to come in. And then I just see what happens. And to me, the experience of plants is that they often communicate gifts, what they are good for, how they contribute. And what do you find when you do this? I mean, I’m doing this as a full time job for the past almost 30 years. Is the nature seem to be very generous. We live on a planet where generosity is one of the of the keys, it’s like everything that is alive, seemed to have a natural generosity, it always creates more than what it needs just to survive for itself. It’s like the chickens would explain the same thing. Not every egg is supposed to be a chicken. There are also eggs that are supposed to be food. We give more than what we need for ourselves. It’s just an humans, we seem to forget that we are also beings on this planet, we’re supposed to be generous. And when we constantly relate to what we gain from something we trade, that we don’t share, we trade, it’s different. Nature doesn’t do that, it constantly gives. And with plants, I think you get really reminded of that and that’s how they will also explain that even when we destroy this planet, if we just leave it for a long enough time, it will start healing itself. It’s the generosity that makes that possible. Because there is already an extra in each tuft of grass in in each tree that will give something back to the earth. If we have destroyed badly enough with whatever radioactive substances or chemicals or whatever, perhaps we also need to put on some conscious acting into that. But nature in itself is healing because it’s in its nature. And that’s why it’s not revengeful. It’s like we’re waiting for nature to hit back. It’s like we continue to destroy it until it hits back. But that’s perhaps not likely to happen, it’s the consequence of our actions might hit back. But there is no sort in nature, to be harmful to teach you something. Nature seems to teach through compassion, it’s the entire idea of teaching is, the more I am able to feel inside of me, the effects of my actions, the more I learn, I don’t really learn as much from being punished. And that’s what we see when we punish dogs and horses to do as they’re told, because we believe that they live in a hierarchy, where the leader is punishing them. So it’s natural. But why is it then when I meet animals that are perfectly obedient, and perhaps even very good in competitions or whatever, and they are totally submissive, they are never happy? I mean, they should naturally be happy. We are not happy in submission. We know that. Why would anyone else be? And I think that’s where the idea of hierarchy can become harmful, not the way you describe it from an evolutionary point of view, but we need to recreate the circle of it. Because otherwise, we tend to believe that by bringing us to the top, and having a different sense of value, when we look at the others, we are losing the possibility of entering into this reality. And to me, what is the point of spiritual awakening, if it doesn’t happen here, if it doesn’t happen from the heart, and we can’t share it with the rest of the life. It’s not a career, we’re not making a spiritual career. We’re not moving on to somewhere else, where there is university class for the best ones, right, we were diving into the eternal, unconditional, compassionate love that we came from, whether we’re good or bad, we’re gonna end up there.

Rick Archer: That’s beautiful. You’re so eloquent. I really appreciate this. I was kind of reminded, as you’re speaking of the movie by Michael Moore, I called “Where should we invade next”.

Emelie Cajsdotter: I don’t mean to laugh, but it is very human, isn’t it?

Rick Archer: Yeah. And he was talking about the prison system. And I don’t know whether it was Sweden, Denmark, Norway, one of the Scandinavian countries. And he was saying, it’s almost like a country club. I mean, these people are treated so nicely, and that they really rehabilitate. And they have very low recidivism rates and everything, compared to the punishment mentality that we have in the US and probably other places. So God, this is so interesting.  There’s a number of things I’d like to talk to you about, one is that you sort of subtly alluded to it just now. And there were parts in your book, which made me think of it, which I think you feel, maybe in part because of your communication with with horses and other animals, and also just your own insights, that society is undergoing a big transition. And let’s talk about that a little bit. I mean, there’s certain things; I live in Iowa, which is in the middle of the US, and there are something like 22, or 23 million pigs in Iowa, and 3 million people. And those pigs don’t have very good lives, most of them live in, in CAFOs, which are these confinements of 1200 hogs that can’t even turn it around, because they’re so so tightly confined. And it pollutes the environment, it pollutes the air, Iowa has the second highest cancer rate in the country. So all kinds of problems from it. So when I see something like that, I can’t imagine an enlightened society in which such a thing could exist. So what do you see as what’s your vision of an ideal world that we might hopefully come to realize? And how would our treatment of animals look, what would it look like in such a world? And what do we need to do to help transition to that world and what are we doing to retard our transitioning to that world?

Emelie Cajsdotter: Well, I believe that a truly compassionate experience, and compassionate to me would mean the expansion of the self to include others than me, I believe that’s the only way to really come to an insight that would change me that will motivate me to change. Because I believe punishment, it only lasts for a short while. We watch a horrible movie, or someone was filming the reality of these pigs and for a couple of weeks, no one will eat pig meat because it’s you just can’t. Because it’s painful for you to see that movie and you don’t want to contribute, but then you forget,

Rick Archer: Actually, there are actually laws against taking movies like that. You can get arrested if you bring a camera into one of these places.

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah, brilliant. So that’s not possible then. But some sometimes there are these brave people that do these things.

Rick Archer: So they sneak a camera in or something.

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah, but we forget that, and then eventually we go back to our tradition and culture, because that’s that’s easiest, right? So I believe we need to practice. We need to practice compassion from when we’re small. I think one big mistake is that we tend to believe that humans are the only one that’s that can feel compassion, as if that would be inbuilt. And without doing anything, we’re just going to be in that state. And I think we definitely have the possibility to become compassionate. But we need to constantly practice. Because when we don’t constantly practice an opening, it will just naturally start closing itself. Because that’s, that’s how it goes. And the reason why I really believe in this is that I’ve had the experience of animals talking about life after death. And I’ve met people that talk about life after death. And the interesting thing is that their stories are exactly the same, it’s not just a little bit similar. And if you’re really trying to look, you can see some similarities, they are exactly the same. On the dot, the same. And the key in the stories, the way I see it so far, is that all of these individuals describe that after you pass over, and you leave your body here and your experiences goes back and is planted in the soil in a way quite beautifully. You bury the body and the experience of the body is also being transformed because we have cellular memory, then the soul continues on its journey somehow. Everyone keeps explaining the same thing and it’s that at one point, you meet a being, it’s never really described as a person, but it’s still someone. And this someone is so loving that there is no words that can describe it, really, it’s this complete, compassionate, unconditional love. With the presence of this extremely loving, non judgmental being, you go through your entire life. And the animals will describe it as you go through every second of it. Not just the sort of main traces or big events, or whatever most important conclusions, but every single second, you really live your life. Because you’re outside of time, it’s not irrelevant how long it will take you have all the time in the world. And then if you’re out of time, you’re actually also outside of any form. So, there’s no limitation to how many individuals can go through this at the same time, because you’re no longer in a place. With this going through your entire life with this compassionate being is that you don’t only experience what you’ve done yourself, but you experience how the rest of the world have experienced you. So you get the full compassionate insight into how your life has been. And of course, you could choose to see that as a punishment, if you believe in that there has to be justice. Because if you have killed someone, and you will truly experience how the other one experience that, while there is an insight in that, but it’s not brought to you as a punishment, because it’s brought to you with this complete compassion because there seems to be nothing else that would make you dare to become so vulnerable, that you can truly receive that experience. With all these insights, then the people with near death experiences, they tend to go back to life after that. So the story sort of ends there. If I’ve understood it, right, I haven’t had it myself. But some animals continue the story by saying that after this deep insight in your your life as an entirety, you go into a state of forgetfulness, and no one knows what happens there and to most of the spieces that describes this, that is also where God comes into it or the Creator, whatever you choose to call it, because that is beyond the individual awareness. There is no longer any individual that can remember anything there is complete nothingness. And the great mystery, and why there perhaps is a God, is because no one knows what happens there but out of this nothingness where everything merges together in in some nothing and everything at the same time, the individual is born again out of that comes the individual The seed that sprouts the person that is born comes out of that. And that is the big, mystic miracle that no one can ever explain. And perhaps we don’t want to explain it because it will take something away. But if you think about that learning and that insight, what if the only way for us to come to a true insight in what we’re doing is through compassion, then that seems somehow logic to me. And when we bring humans into the room of having animal teachers, like we do here, there is something about that meeting point, because the if the animals are what we described, they are already in connection with a greater, whatever. But I would also say that there are scales there when we say the animals can also make the journey. Because animals that are brought to our civilization, and like the pigs you describe, like chickens in a factory, like horses that are being whipped in a riding school, they can also lose that connection. It just seems that their way back is perhaps a bit straighter and shorter than ours. If they get reminded, it’s like they more quickly go back into it. While with humans, we tend to, and I guess that has to do with our identification and our ability to interpret what we experience – we like habits. If you have a dog that has been abused by a man wearing a blue sweater, that dog will, even after the treatment of post traumatic stress disorder and the entire healing process. Most likely this dog will avoid men with blue sweaters for the rest of its life because it’s a survival instinct. But a human in the same situation is sadly likely to marry the man with a blue sweater. Why? Why do we  choose habit? We seem to feel so safe with a habit that it’s worth the risk. Even if we know we will die from the habit we know we can die if we smoke, but the habit is stronger. And perhaps that’s why we have more twists and turns on our roads.

Rick Archer: Animals can get into bad habits, when they are given cocaine or whatever, they get addicted.

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes they can, definitely. But it takes an unnatural environment for that to happen, right? I guess it’s the same for us.

Rick Archer: We’ve created unnatural environment.

Emelie Cajsdotter: But if you have, for example, like we have in this place, we have animals that have been abused. And most of them might have had some sort of level of post traumatic stress disorder, they heal it. And then they meet people. And I guess when we enter a room with our physical being, our stories come with us, whether they’re spoken of or not. So when you have these animals that have healed, or are in a process of healing, and they have no judgmental ability, because they don’t build their world on opinions. And then something happens to us in our courage and vulnerability to meet ourselves when we have an animal present, compared to if there were not. So I think that there is a great chance for us to dare to go one step further to this, to practice meeting God when we leave this body, how much of that can be done here on this planet so that we can come to these insights and give back this love. What if this planet is a reflection of the other side of outside of time? How much can we bring back from there already when we are alive, like the Sufis are talking about dying while you are still alive. And I meet animals that speak about that as well. And one horse, he was so sick, that he was really preparing to die. And he invited me to be with him, me and another horse because he said there is always a witness, when someone is doing this there is always a witness so that the story will be brought back to the living. So it was me and another horse sitting with this dying horse. And then he went through the whole process of shifting his consciousness from his limited being, if you want to call it that his personalities person, to his to a greater sense of self, a more wide sense of self. And, and when he did that shift, he could see himself as a young foal. And he could see how this young individual was he was scared of everything. He was worried about the future. He was afraid of pain. He was afraid of humans; and he had this huge love towards himself as this tiny foal. So all you wanted to do was to tell him: “Please, my dear boy, you don’t have to worry about anything. It’s all fine. We’re all going back to God”. But then, before he did that, he was like, no, wait a minute, I will not tell him, because I trust him so much that he will be able to find this path by himself, that I love him enough to trust him to go through all the pain and worries and sufferings that he will go through so we can finally meet here. Because otherwise, we will never have done that. So there is this love in setting someone free to also make all the mistakes he needs to make. And it was beautiful to follow him on this and he survived. He survived his injury he healed after that. He lived for another year. And he had had a tumor, after a year, the tumor was so big that it was the end of it. And I was sitting with him in this field next to a lake and I knew we both knew that he was dying in a few days. And he was like: “This is fine. I’ve already done that the big death, the big death. That was a year ago, this step outside of existence, this is just this is the small death, the small dying.” And I’m thinking perhaps it is the same for us that actually, we are so tied to the habit of our identity, that that’s a bigger sense of dying than actually losing the body. Because of the repetition, perhaps it is like that. But what if we can start that journey? Already here?

Rick Archer: Yeah, like you say it’s die before you die.

Emelie Cajsdotter: Then we need compassion. So before we have that compassion as a natural element in our human training. We had a horse that described the human beings as not fully upright yet, it’s like we are not completely there yet. There is still hope, actually, because this is not all that we can be. But we need to do something about it. We need to have a way to challenge ourselves. I suppose. That’s what I like with your questions when you challenge me. I love this because it’s there is such a respect and curiosity in it. And we need to do that to each other and dare to do it. Because it’s not criticism. It’s bringing out more of ourselves, right?

Rick Archer: Yeah

Emelie Cajsdotter: So I think, sadly, nothing will happen for these pigs. Perhaps not before compassion has become a subject in school that is scheduled into our lives, not something we do in the spare time when we have a nice moment. And the sun is setting and the weather is good. It’s has to be part of our everyday practice.

Rick Archer: Very good. Yeah, there’s several seed thoughts that I want to talk to you about, and everything that you’ve just said. One is how to make compassion, more of a universal development for humanity. Another is on the subject of reincarnation, I have a question or two.

Emelie Cajsdotter: And so have I!

Rick Archer: And another is about what you do there with your school because as you speak, I mean, you mentioned it’s a school and a farm. And as you speak, I keep visioning that: Wow, this is a place where you should have like retreats where people can come for a week or two and 40-50 people or whatever number you can accommodate and work with you, work with the animals and just kind of immerse themselves in the kind of wisdom you’re expressing and also just your orientation to animals, I think it could be a lot more beneficial for people then a lot of great many spiritual retreats that people go on. So there’s that. I mean, do you have anything like that when you say it’s a school?

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah, it took a long time. I mean, it’s a process. And I don’t know where it’s going. Because it started with the animals coming here in a very bad state, and they needed time to heal, and they needed a safe place. So my idea, I was 21, when I moved out here by myself, with this crazy dream that no one believed in, perhaps not even me, but the urge to do it was stronger and I had nothing to lose basically, to create a place where you can be yourself without being judged, where you don’t have to be someone else in order to be accepted, in order to survive, in order to make money. And I wanted that for the animals that they had been whipped, they’ve been threatened to be killed because they don’t give people what they think that they deserve to get from these animals. We forget that if I buy a horse because I wanted to jump with that horse, for example, when I buy that horse from another human being, I never made a deal with that horse. I mean, it’s slave trade, actually. I mean, I buy, I want a service from that animal, and I pay someone else for it. And then I get disappointed when I don’t get anything back from the animal, to the point where I have these explanations that “perhaps I should kill it, because I deserve better”. It’s very sad when you think about it like that. So I wanted to create a place where you can feel safe, where you’re not going to get sold. This is the end of the road, if you if you come here as an animal that were close to die in a severe state of PTSD, most of them, then it’s not that  once you’re better you will be sold. We take away the concept of being sold, because it’s problematic, it means that you have a limited value. And animals tend to even if you’re worth $10 million, it’s still very limited value, because you can count it. All spieces seem to describe that no matter what you are in this in this creation, that the life in you is equally big. But it’s not more life in you or me than in the tree or the elephant or the mosquito or the gnat or whatever. The actual life it’s unmeasurable, and there is a value in that, that we need to be able to sense it in ourselves to really, really value this creation, I guess, and therefore, we can’t have animals for sale, because it would go against this idea, it would not only make the value of the animals smaller, but it would it would reflect back on me because that’s what I how I would see them. But all along, which I didn’t know was that the animals was also thinking that this is exactly the place that human needs. So exactly what you say is where they are going. Because they say that humans needs to practice this too.

Rick Archer: It ties in with the idea of how can we develop more compassion? Because I think spending a week or two in a place like yours would definitely help to culture people’s hearts and their compassion a lot more, which would have a lasting value.

Emelie Cajsdotter: And it does! Which is so hopeful that it seems to work. You have to come by free will, and you have to accept the full fact that you have to do the job yourself, you’re not going to be given anything. That needs to be clear. Because otherwise, we are waiting to be fed with wisdom. And then we will come out on the other end as more wise people. We need to take it in and it’s our own responsibility. The horses are there, whether we can go to where they are, that’s our responsibility. We need to follow the urge. But it seems to really work. So I was creating displays for the animals and the animals seems to all along be creating it for us. Because they say that since we have developed this gap, we have this gap. I mean, I guess in the end, it’s a gift. But without the connection to the entirety, it’s problematic, like you say, we are teenagers, we really are. But because we then all the time interpret the world, then we believe that that’s what everyone is doing to us, too. So if I’m creating a world based on opinions, I believe that everyone else is doing it to whether I think it or not, which means that as a human being, I probably have an underlying fear of being judged all the time to some extent. Which means that I also have a protection against that. And that protection is in the way, in the development of compassion, that’s going to be problematic. So in order to start practicing compassion, I cannot feel judged. I think if we copy what might be happening on the other side, is that we go to a place where we are not being judged when we’re met with full compassion. And perhaps that’s the only thing that can make us see ourselves fully, then naturally that would be what we need to create here. And we need a place that it’s safe enough for nature to create, at least from what we can with our resources, a natural environment, where life can interact with each other. It will be different if we’re cutting down the forests around. We don’t own almost anything. The farm where I live is tiny. So we were renting land all over the place. So all the animals can have place and now we have a situation where land is being sold. It’s complicated. And we’re now trying to think that; “okay to make this place last, because now we are in a transition step, to make this place last perhaps in a legal form, we need to create a foundation because if we create a foundation it means that that legally the land will actually then own itself and if the land own itself”.  Then we are moving closer to an equal meeting between human beings and other species. And then we are one step closer to compassion. And also it needs to pass, it has to get past me. I can’t be in the middle of this, that’s not the idea. Even if I started it, it shouldn’t be owned by me and die with me. It needs to have its own landing and sitting in the in this world. And we’re hoping for that. So so that’s the project that is happening now. Because exactly what you say.  We had a horse dying. Naturally, they die their liver all their lives, and they die. And it’s sad, of course, but it’s there is also beauty in it. And the last thing he saw before he died is similar to what you said, in the forest line at the end of the field where he was standing, he saw rows of people waiting, and they wanted to come in. And he said: “When people are really longing in their hearts to experience this, you are meant to welcome them, you don’t turn them away”. And I think that is really important. And we’re looking for forms for that. Because this is so new, the school started in 2018. Now we’re on our third class. And it’s 30 students, and they are chosen by the horses. So they have to send a letter in to me, because I need something that is them.

Rick Archer: You know what you read the letter to the horses?

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes, I read the letter to the horses. I don’t think they are at all interested in the content. It’s like I’ve done this, this is my name,

Rick Archer: They get an image of the person?

Emelie Cajsdotter: They get an image of the person. And it’s fascinating because they don’t seem to choose the people because you are chosen and you’re better than this one. And you have this ability. They seem to choose them because something in that person is being seen. I remember one was explaining that I was reading a letter and she saw a pair of hands. And she said: “Who would only show the hands? That’s interesting”. And because that connection had happened by the curiosity of the horse, that person was then welcomed. And then it seems to be that they mainly invite people because of the timing of things, not because of who you are and what you’re good at. Because there’s never an explanation. It only seems to be that the timing is at this moment, our paths are crossing. So you can come.

Rick Archer: What percentage of people who apply can come?

Emelie Cajsdotter: Well, we have for the last class, we had about 200 people applying all in all and there’s placed for 30.

Rick Archer: Wow, that’s interesting.

Emelie Cajsdotter: And I’m thinking that the longing inside of the people that cannot come all at the same time. Because I also we need to be able to fold. We cannot commercialize this, it wouldn’t work. You pay your feed, because we have to pay our taxes.

Rick Archer: I’m sure people should pay.

Emelie Cajsdotter: But it’s the point is not that. I mean, that’s what we need to do, but why we have to limit the numbers is also because of time and space, to have time to meet these people.

Rick Archer: What if 1000 People watching this interview and a 1000 People want to come you’re gonna have to live with the numbers.

Emelie Cajsdotter: So after one year, the ground court, that sort of basic course, is two years and we meet in weekends. And we’re outside all the time, because the horses are outside all the time. And I think it’s important that it’s not too comfortable. I don’t mean it as it has to be uncomfortable. But I think we need to feel things we need to experience it with the bodies. If it’s rain, we’re outside and we feel the rain. Sometimes we’re cold, sometimes we don’t understand anything, sometimes we’re frustrated. That’s important. The fascinating thing, when you take a group in like this, is that normally in school, you know you learn things and you prove to your teacher that you’ve learned it. Here, you seem to get exercises from mainly the horses, and you’re not actually supposed to be able to succeed all the time. Because if you succeed all the time, you’re actually creating an identity around being a successful student. So, what in some exercises you get a glimpse in some exercises, you see what is between you and the meeting point where the other one, in some exercises nothing happens at all because your presence is holding the space for perhaps that one student that is getting a glimpse in that exercise. So you cannot be a successful student in this concept but after one year you get a mentor horse. After that first year. The horses have observed you and some time during that year, you would have perhaps only for a second, but some connection would have happened, that makes one horse feel particularly responsible for you. And at the end of the year, that horse will explain something to me about that person that I write down as a letter. So in the winter, because of the weather, it’s cold in the winter, so the course is from April to November, in December, it would be that lack of comfort would be too obvious. Then the horse that becomes your mentor will give you personal exercises until we meet again in the spring. And, to me, that is so private, that when I write it down, I think that I shouldn’t read it. So I never read it twice. I just try to get it down and put it away, because it’s not for me. It’s two years like this, they meet eight times, and they have this studies in the winter. And then after the first two years, lots of the students didn’t want to finish, they wanted to come back. I thought, well, there’s nothing saying that they can’t come back. So we have some students doing follow up years, some did five years. So every second year, we start a new class. Because to go that deep, and to be able to write these letters, if it’s 100, I wouldn’t be able to do it. But we also, I think this has to happen in the physical. But there are things that we can share online. So we’re creating a platform for stories. I mean the pandemic taught us a lot about how we can share things when we can to meet and some of that is valuable. So we can have a platform where people can take part of what we’re doing here and start practicing at home, even if you have to wait for your place to come into one of the courses.

Rick Archer: Let me ask you a couple questions here. I imagine there’s a lot with all you’re saying that it sounds like there’s a lot you can teach people, but can you actually help them to acquire the kind of ability that you have too?

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.

Rick Archer: So how many people; what percentage again, talking percentages, are able to achieve some degree of animal communication the way you do it?

Emelie Cajsdotter: I would say all of them to some extent, but very individually. It’s like for me, it will happen a lot through vision. And because I would see images and I would get feelings and instant experiences. Before I did this, I ran away from home when I was very young, because it was complicated. And I I earned my living as painting portraits. So I think for me, it would naturally come as images. Because that’s the fastest way probably for my brain to perceive something, it wouldn’t necessarily be an image for someone else. But it can still be a very deep experience of the other one. And I would say that that has happened to all of the students in different ways in different degrees. But the really hopeful thing is it’s possible. It’s not something that you teach as a method, but by placing a person in an environment that is non-judgmental, and somehow safe. And we practice a compassionate being, a compassionate interaction. Like in lots of exercises, someone will be with the horse, for example, we can have a person sitting on a horse, with closed eyes, and no bridle and saddle, you’re completely vulnerable. And we have another person just holding that space that can foresee if something happens that is protecting this in a way, we need to practice holding that space for each other. The one holding the space is as important as the one during the exercise for that to take place. So it seems to be more about the space that we are upholding. It’s not really a technique, but it’s re-entering that space seems to be what what does it the exercises are probably just designed differently to fit different people from different angles. That’s why there is a variety. The real exercise seems to be around one question or two, which is from me to the horse. WHO are you? Who ARE you? Or who are YOU? The longing to meet the world? And then the question who am I? Which we will never be able to answer, but it doesn’t make it less relevant.

Rick Archer: I’ve seen a number of TV shows about prisoners who are allowed to work with horses or dogs, or even sometimes I think there was one where they are able to have pet cats, and it was tremendously, it was a wonderful service for the animals, but it was extremely rehabilitative for the prisoners. So we were talking earlier about, you know, criminal rehabilitation, it’d be cool if your thing could be systematized in a way to be introduced more widely. In that context.

Emelie Cajsdotter: I think it couldn’t eventually. Because if it starts to, I mean, it’s obviously lives its own life, and it’s when you start practice, this thing starts to happen. And it’s like I said, this is where we are now we have this course. We have a children’s group that came today. They were practicing lying down on horses that are lose in a herd, so that their spine is following the horse spine, until they are just floating in the sort of similar experience of bodies. It seems to go through the body really helps. And then we have a horse that started a hoof school in how to trim the horse’s feet. When we take away the relationship between the horse and the ground? We’d have to replace that somehow. And we’ll replace this technologically. But what if we go in a compassionate way? And experience this, this relationship between the hoof and the ground and become part of that? And that’s for farriers, because it’s so detailed? So you need to have some basic knowledge before.

Rick Archer: A farrier is somebody who trims horses hooves?

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes, exactly. And then we have now just recently started a course with a horse that is helping to plan the grazing, where in which fields, should we move the horses in? Which time of the year? And what if, because we lock them in pens, and we have harvested the grass, we have disturbed all the functions underneath the ground. So it’s a hard job for her but she’s teaching us about it. And we get to follow her. We’re going to meet her six times this year and follow her connection with the ground and how a grazing animal is not only how they eat, but also how they move and how they they trampled on the ground that makes a difference for the grass and how it grows. And I guess it’s like, what do we find here? And what kind of concepts? If people would come from far away, it will be complicated with a weekend, maybe then we will need like you say, like a retreat for a week that is more intense, for example. I don’t think there is a limited form, the form will develop as we try it out. Because  we are not a university, we don’t have a form that we need to. There’s no structure we’re creating the structure, we are outside our classroom is outside.

Rick Archer: I wouldn’t be surprised if after this interview, people want to come from all over the world.

Emelie Cajsdotter: And then if they if they do, anyone does, yes, you’re welcome!

Rick Archer: I come and shovel manure, I don’t care. I did that once with cows for a few months.

Emelie Cajsdotter: What do you say about shoveling manure is actually also interesting, because in order to receive something, we must give something. We make that trade. And as we know, we need to pay bills, I mean, you also get paid for what you do. That’s one system that we have. But then we have the system of giving without thinking about what we will get back. And that part needs to be there too. So I mean, we run this as a welfare, as a sanctuary. Because the animals have no obligation to contribute with anything and we don’t sell them so we don’t get any money from them. And that’s a sanctuary. You pay for the teachings. Because that’s how we can pay the bills and do it all legally correct. And we have students that also do what you say they come and they shovel manure. We also work with the theatre school, the physical theatre school, and they did a project where they come and clean the barn for a couple of hours, and after that, they get an exercise from any one of the species in how they can find different aspects of their bodies that can be used in their artwork. And that’s one of the most fascinating things I’ve ever done! Because it’s something about giving of your time and your effort. And it will help in what you will gain back, you can’t do it in order to gain something. But there is something in that giving. And one of the horses that was really teaching us they see also said:  “It’s part of your fee, or what you take, it has to be a gift”. So I will always give a bit more than what people pay for. And people will always give a bit more as well, but it could be in any kind of way. You can bring coffee, you can help cleaning, but it’s not just a trade, we’re also meeting because we really want to meet as equals, as people.

Rick Archer: Let me ask you that question about reincarnation.

Emelie Cajsdotter: Let’s just fit in reincarnation so we thought that out too. It is very fascinating.

Rick Archer: Someone named Petra Miskov in London asked: “Do animals say there is reincarnation that we they are reborn?” And before you answer her question I just want to add one: “Have you ever met animals or horses who had been human beings and are now horses? Or have you met human beings who had been horses and are now human beings?”

Emelie Cajsdotter: Well, whether things can be can be proven or not, has to be

Rick Archer: Right, Let’s say a horse tells you: “Yeah, I was Jim Schmo, I lived in London in my last life. And now I’m here as a horse.

Emelie Cajsdotter: There is a difference when we talk about reincarnation with humans, we seem to always have some sort of scale, where you become a human in the end, and then you just stay a human it’s like if you’ve been a human, you don’t go back. Animals, I would say talk a lot about reincarnation. But there are two different things there that I don’t hear as much from humans. One is, and that’s complex; How private is reincarnation? If we follow the road to to this forgetfulness where everything is merging into one and out of that we are reborn? How can I know for sure that it’s just my soul, and nothing else?

Rick Archer: Buddhists seem to have this idea that you know, you just scoop a bucket into the ocean of karma and come out and there’s a new life for you, which may be a conglomerate of many people’s karma. As I understand it, I might be misrepresenting that, then the Hindus have a more of an idea, it seems that our individual Jeeva, or soul remains discrete and moves from life to life and evolves as it goes along accumulates experience.

Emelie Cajsdotter: Perhaps both of those can be true without contradicting each other. If you’re not too linear, I heard this just beautiful, it needs to just be put in here: We have sometimes in the classes  we can ask questions to a particular horse that is interested in a subject. There was this questioning with an elderly mare. And somehow the questions led up to her speaking about prayer. You think that is purely human. But it seems like praying is a natural state for pretty much everyone on this planet. And she described prayer; and this will lead to reincarnation; she she conveyed an image of something that looked like what the soul was made of, like the matter of souls. On that big sort of light kind of mat, I wouldn’t describe it like that, like a carpet sort of thing. There were little circular like oval things that were drawn, I just said they’re only drawn there, these are the individual souls, there are not cut out. They are just drawn so you can see them this is the individual, but it’s not taken out. It’s not separate. So we are individual, but we are never disconnected would be and to her the meaning of pray would be….

Rick Archer: Sure, it’s just like waves their individual waves, not disconnected from eachoter.

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah, exactly. And for her the meaning of praying would be to remind yourself about that you wouldn’t pray to get something. But the prayer would lead you back to the memory that we are not disconnected. And that will bring a sense of hope.

Rick Archer: That’s nice.

Emelie Cajsdotter: It’s really beautiful, and it makes a lot of sense. Like what you say the scooping thing. Like Funny a horse that seemed to relate to reincarnation all the time, and she helps people by seeing those stories, says that we cannot really say which story belongs to whom. But we can say that some stories have affected you, and really affected to in who you are now, more than other stories, but to whom the story belongs is perhaps less relevant, it affects you, and that’s what counts. And she also had one woman saying what if life is too difficult? What do you do when life is too difficult? She said; “well if if your life is overwhelming, and it’s too difficult than others will come and help you”. Meaning that what she basically said is like your karma is not only yours, you might be helping someone else in their karma, someone else might be helping you. Karma is not personal. It’s something we do together. And I like that thought as well. But the same horse also say that when you leave this life, you go out through; it’s like she sent an image of a little gate, like a little door, you go out there, when you enter again, you go in through the same door. Because you go into the same door, you actually also bring on, like your old clothes. So even if you’re everyone and everyone is in you, you also follow a personal story. And if you go through all of this in a couple of minutes, perhaps both are true, we are being scooped up as a mixture. But there is also a personal story. In the personal story, we are never disconnected and we’re continuously helping each other. So that’s one thing that comes from animals. And the other thing is that they seem to never really make any scales of anything. It’s like whether you become a human being a stone, a tree, that water. And when you can be an element, it doesn’t really seem to matter. It’s like you will enter this life and get exactly the experience that you precisely need. Because life seemed to really wish us the best. It’s like there is something kind behind all this – we get exactly what is best for us, we just don’t understand it. And this circular thing, it seems to just be circles moving in all directions, rather than a ladder. And eventually you end up with God. It’s like, you’re never disconnected from God. You just keep going in and out. So then what you do, and what you give in this life is much more important than who you are, in a way. So they all seem to relate to reincarnation, but  not as a ladder to reach a goal.

Rick Archer: Yeah. Interesting. Guess what you give is the proof of who you are, you know, it’s the walking of the talk, so to speak. There’s a cute little bit from your book: “Among all the animals I have been communicating with, there was one question that they repeatedly continued to ask; how is it that you people have forgotten where you once came from?”

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah. Yes. That’s the entire story. Right?

Rick Archer: Yeah, it is. So there’s a lot of interesting stuff in your book that we haven’t had a chance to get to. You had some amazing experiences in New Zealand, which were far out. I mean, interesting stuff. You have had some amazing experiences in Jordan.

Emelie Cajsdotter: Oh, definitely.

Rick Archer: And there’s Estelle and Muhammad who somehow rather you actually just sort of emerged consciousnesses with at some point, and he was treating horses through you, and you were treating horses through him. And that was all very interesting. And then there’s the whole time travel thing where you you keep flashing back to this time where there’s a green man and a young girl and all this stuff. We don’t really have time to talk about all this stuff right now. You once saw the king of Iraq as an apparition, not the current king of Iraq, but some ancient king of earth actually showed up in the stable with you and it was conversing with you.

Emelie Cajsdotter: And then I thought that I’d really lost it. Until I went back to see my I can say that I work for her, but she’s also my great friend. So I don’t know what to call it. She is my friend. But everything seems to be normal to her. So when I come back from the stables, and she’s related to this person,

Rick Archer: She was the daugther of the king of King Hussein or something?

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes, exactly. And I said, I saw this person at the stables and he told me these things. Now I’ve really lost it and I don’t know what to do, and she said: “What did he look like? ” I described him and his essence and the way he looks and she brings out a photo and she said: “Is it him?”  Yes. Well, that’s normal, you know, because he used to be king in Iraq. And some of the horses here are relative to the horses he had and, and to her, this linear, that we come and go, and that we keep connecting beyond time, it’s everyday life for her.

Rick Archer: It’s very interesting. Yeah, it’s everyday life for you, too.

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes, but I struggle a bit more than her. That’s the only thing.

Rick Archer: Yeah. So here’s a good quote that maybe we should wrap it up on, you can comment on it if you want. I can talk to you for another two hours about all these things. But maybe we’ll do another one one of these days to cover some of the things we didn’t talk about today.

Emelie Cajsdotter: We can! You’re always welcome here anyways.

Rick Archer: Well, thanks. That’d be fun. I mean, it’s a lot easier to do a Zoom call than it is to fly to Sweden.

Emelie Cajsdotter: We can start like that.

Rick Archer: Yeah, that would be fun to do that too. But here’s a little something, an end note which you can comment on. I mean, here’s another thing you said in the book that I thought would be interesting to talk about that we didn’t get to, which is that there were situations in your life where trees nearby were being clear cut, and you ended up having like a visceral reaction to it in terms of your kidneys failing and you heart having problems and stuff like that, which is like you were kind of entraining with the soul of the trees that were being killed, you know?

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah.

Rick Archer: Interesting. Alright, so here’s this point that we could perhaps be a wrap up point. So I’ll try to pronounce this Arabic word, Alhamdulillah – “Whatever happens, it must be for the best of everything. I may not be able to see it at the time. But I have faith in the way things are.”

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah

Rick Archer: That’s a good thing to live by.

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes it is.

Rick Archer: I try to do that. Whatever God does this for the best as another way of putting it.

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah.

Rick Archer: Yeah. Is your place in pretty good shape? Are you in dire circumstances now of losing the thing? Because you don’t have enough money? What’s going on there?

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah, we’re both. We are losing a farm that has been the center point of the educational part because it’s the best grazing paddock for the horses. It’s huge. And that’s up for sale, and they want us to buy it and we don’t have enough money.

Rick Archer: So announcement people, if you would like to contribute.

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah, that will be very helpful.

Rick Archer: And on the website there’s something about how to contribute.

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah, there is. If it was only that it would be easier. But then we’re losing another huge product because of a solarcell park. We’re losing three more paddocks because they’re being replanted with trees instead of kept as grazing lands. The when we lost all these, you come to the question, Well, is this a sign that we should just stop what we’re doing? But there are no other signs of that? And the horses are not saying that. So what if this is that we need to reach out to the world and say that we need help? Is this important enough for enough people? The horses always said that this place is being kept and held by many small good deeds. So if we can collect more small good deeds, that will then be turned into this foundation, a foundation can only be built around something that is physical and exists. So the idea is, if we can get enough money to buy this particular farm, that is for sale, we will turn that into a foundation.

Rick Archer: So that farm would meet your needs in terms of space and all that.

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes it would, and then we would turn it into a foundation. It means that we can receive and welcome more people, because we will have a more solid ground, literally. If we can’t achieve that, then we will have to trust, this like you’re saying we will have to trust that God wishes us well. We’re not going to give up, then we will continue to collect things until we can buy something else. Because I truly believe in this foundation to create this non-judgmental space that will continue past us that live now. We have information about it in the website and anyone that contributes anything. It goes only to that, there is no administration fees, there’s nothing. Definitely it will either be this form or or something else that will show itself to be the one.

Rick Archer: And you know the story of The Old Man and the boy walking on the beach and seeing a lot of starfish. Do you know that story?

Emelie Cajsdotter: No.

Rick Archer: Okay, so this relates to what you’re talking about here. So an old man and a boy were walking along the beach and the tide had gone out. And there were just 1000s of starfish as far as the eye could see that were lying on the shore and drying up in the sun. And you know, they’re all going to die if they didn’t get back in the water, but they couldn’t get back in the water. So as they walked along. Irene could you

Irene Archer: She just came in.

Rick Archer: Alright, we’ll just let the dog cough in the background, doesn’t matter.

Emelie Cajsdotter: No, it’s a dog. It’s one of us.

Rick Archer: So anyway, as they walked along, every now every few steps, the old man would bend down, pick up starfish and throw it in the water. And after a while the boy said to him, you know why bother? You know, what difference can it possibly make? There are 1000s of them. You know, what, what difference can you make? And so when the boy said that the man reaches down, picks up another one throws it in the water and says; “made a difference to that one!”

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah, exactly!

Rick Archer: And your place, people might think, okay, there are millions of animals in the world. They’re 22 million pigs in Iowa. They’re all this stuff. What can your little farm with 150 animals do? But I think it not only makes a difference to the animals that you actually treat, or help, but it’s something like that is like a beacon or a transmitter, that creates a quality in collective consciousness that is sorely needed in the world. And that may in fact be multiplied if your transmitter is bright enough or strong enough for whatever, so that such that more more things will like that will crop up and collective consciousness will change and, you know, will help to sort of bring about the transformation that we were talking about earlier to what society actually needs to be if it’s to survive and flourish.

Emelie Cajsdotter: Exactly. And that’s a lot. If we get a chance to talk again, that’s what the Jordanian horses are really speaking about. The connection between the transformation of the individual and how that affects society and how that cannot be taken apart from each other. So I guess it counts, it’s like every, every glimpse counts, every intention counts, you know?

Rick Archer: Yeah. They say that there are Yogi’s in the Himalayas, who just live in a cave, but they radiate an influence without which the humanity would be much worse off.  And, you know, something like what you’re doing I see as it’s in a similar way, it creates an influence that is sorely needed, and that you really helps the world in a much bigger way than then you might, then people, might realize it’s possible. A couple of more questions came in, I might as well ask them, they’re kind of goofy, but a little out of context with this grand conclusion we just reached but what the heck? So here’s one from a fella named Srinath. In Dallas, Texas. I’m sure your answer to this is yes. Can you converse with cows? As you can with horses?

Emelie Cajsdotter: I truly belive that. Yes.

Rick Archer: They probably speak a different language, but you can converse.

Emelie Cajsdotter: No, it’s like everything is alive. If everything that is alive, knows that it’s alive, there is always a meeting point.

Rick Archer: Yeah, I mean, you have several stories in the book of communicating with trees and trees, those trees had a lot of interesting things to say. Here’s one from Shiram Ganesh in Chennai, India, when you say not all eggs are meant to be chicken, certain eggs are meant to be eaten. Who decides it: The egg or the eater? Will not this concept of that things are meant to be eaten justify anything?

Emelie Cajsdotter: That is a very good question.

Rick Archer: Does the pig decide he wants to be food instead of live his life as a pig?

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah, this is…We need more time.  Yeah, it’s right. When he used the phrase “meant to be” it’s complicated. I think what the chicken meant is that not every egg will be a chicken, some eggs will be food. Who decides?How much is free will? And how much of our actions is guarded because of what we choose? And how much can we choose? And how much of our actions is because we are unconsciously acting on the greater good. We wouldn’t know that would we?

Rick Archer: Yeah No?

Emelie Cajsdotter: How much does our awakening change? The horse that are teaching us this, one of the horses that really made the basis of the school was like – where are we going with this, then? Well, one of the things is freedom, not freedom to do whatever we want. But freedom to truly choose because we’re not so tied to our identifications. So we’re not just pulled by forces.

Rick Archer: Have more discernment or discrimination?

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes. And how much will that choice change the entirety and the ability for others to do that? I mean, all of that is in that question about the egg. Right?

Rick Archer: Yeah, it’s interesting. Wow! Well, this has been great, Emelie, I really enjoyed this. I’d like your book, and I like talking to you even more than your book. So thanks so much. And thanks for what you’re doing. And thanks to those who’ve been listening or watching. And, you know, obviously have a page up on BatGap with a little bit more about Emelie and the links to her books and links to her website, and so on, so that you can go there. And, you know, there’s a lot of interesting things to read on the website. And hopefully people listening to this will contribute to financial aid, some may want to come for courses, and I just really hope it helps to boost everything you’re doing because I think what you’re doing is really important and beautiful.

Emelie Cajsdotter: And hopefully just the inspiration that might come or we’re just challenging the thoughts to something that wasn’t before. And we’re constantly changing. I mean, the website is changing so much is happening now. And forms of meeting and teaching. That part feels very hopeful. That in that’s why I believe it’s we’re not meant to shut down. We’re meant to find the next level of ground. Just so in this case, it’s the ground literally.

Rick Archer: Yeah, I was reminded again, of my teacher who was Maharishi Mahesh Yogi by the way, and very early in his mission, he was sitting in some redwood forest in California with a small group of people. And he was the only teacher at that point of Transcendental Meditation. And he was talking about these big plans of getting everybody in the world to meditate are lots of people. And someone said: “How in the world can you do that? You’re just one man.” He said: “I’ll replicate myself”.

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes!

Rick Archer: I hope it can result in people establishing things similar to you.

Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes, yes. That is happening. It’s it starts to happen, actually. So it’s hopeful. It’s lots of work to do. But it’s also hopeful.

Rick Archer: Yeah. Great. Okay. Well, thank you. And the my next interview will be towards the end of the month, and I’m going to be talking with two people that I’ve interviewed previously. But on different topics, the topic of this one is going to be about what’s going on with extraterrestrials. Are they really visiting us? We’re not going to spend too much on that we’re going to kind of jump to the conclusion that they are, but then we’re going to get into a why what does it have some kind of spiritual significance? And I think it’s going to be an interesting conversation, I think, for me, at least, so that’s why I’m doing it. But, but anyway, hope you’ll join us for that. And there’s an upcoming interviews page on batgap.com where you can see what we’ve got scheduled coming up. All right. Thanks, Emelie.

Emelie Cajsdotter: Thank you.

Rick Archer: We’ll be in touch.

Emelie Cajsdotter: We will.

Rick Archer: Yes. And thanks to those who’ve been listening or watching we’ll see you around. Bye. Bye.

Emelie Cajsdotter: Bye.