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My Crowded Sanctuary – Clare Sheridan

The Bikkhu was in complete accord with this, and expatiated upon the two forms of meditation: the intaking of spirit and the outgiving of love. He said that before starting on his journey to come to me he sent out loving thoughts to the birds, the flowers, and the trees, to the spirits of all living things in this place, so that he might receive a friendly welcome.

It seemed to him quite natural that the spirit in the great oak-tree speaks to me. All the trees have spirits, and were we sufficiently evolved or attuned, we would understand the language of all the animal and vegetable world. He then described how, when he was only fifteen and had joined Holy Orders, he and a few others accompanied their Guru (teacher) to a solitary place on the edge of the jungle, where for some months they lived in primitive isolation, and learnt the language of Nature.

The novices lived in simple huts of interwoven branches at a distance of a mile or so from the other. The nearest village was ten miles away, and every few days they were obliged to beg their food. At stated intervals they congregated for instruction and discussion, but from sunset 'to the hour of breaking fast' each was alone. The jungle, he said, was terrifying, and the first few nights he dared not sleep. It was not the wild animals that frightened him, but the ghosts!

The jungle abounds, it seems, with elemental spirits.

He described the bright lights, some red and some green, the size of a football, that hung in mid-space, and would suddenly, like a luminous balloon, rise up to the highest tree-top. They never came out of the jungle, and in time he got used to them.