Short Stories About the Sparks in the OUBEY MINDSPACE – Episode 10: Mind in the Waters

They live in complex, stable groups, communicate with one another over long distances, develop regional dialects, and call each other by name. They play together, learn from one another, form deep emotional bonds, and possess individual self-awareness and self-recognition.

Since the 1930s, research has repeatedly drawn attention to the highly developed intelligence and fundamentally peaceful nature of whales and dolphins. Initial efforts to protect whales were undertaken; particularly endangered species, such as the humpback whale, which at the time numbered only about 100 individuals, were placed under international protection; and the first protected zones were established.

Nevertheless, in the 1960s, whaling on the world’s oceans remained a common practice, while at the same time, a different kind of business involving these marine creatures was launched  in SeaWorld parks around the world: in small, artificially constructed pools, orcas and dolphins, deprived of their freedom, performed acrobatic tricks for a paying audience.

Then, in 1974, a book titled “The Spirit in the Waters—A Book in Honor of the Consciousness of Whales and Dolphins,” edited by Joan McIntyre, was published. To my knowledge, it was the first book to compile the findings of various researchers on the intelligence and social behavior of whales and dolphins into a comprehensive anthology, making them accessible to a wider public.

“But how is it for that other mind, the mind in the waters? How is it for these enormous, alien brains that traverse the oceans, whose songs ring out, which dream, which dwell on distant memories, which school one another in decency and morals? What does it look like in the spiritual world of a creature whose brain is larger and possibly more complex than ours and which cannot translate its will into world-changing action – if only because it has no hands?”

When OUBEY and I read this book for the first time in 1984, ten years after its publication in Germany, we were impressed and moved by the encounters with whales and dolphins and the stories of experiences with them recounted here. The pathos of esoteric whims was equally foreign to both of us. From our perspective, however, this was about knowledge and a fundamental understanding of facts. The idea that other living beings inhabiting this Earth or its oceans might possess consciousness seemed unimaginable to most people— , at least at that time. That they are intelligent and capable of learning was, after all, no longer in dispute. After all, intelligence agencies have often used the occasional dolphin for their espionage operations and still do so today.

But that they possess consciousness? Don’t they simply follow a genetic-biological program? How could they gain insights that would constitute consciousness, when they know only the elements of water and air and nothing of life on land? And where would they get the free will to make decisions?

We discussed these and many more questions. With questions of this kind, our aim was not to find an answer, certainly not the one true and correct one. In these conversations, our own consciousness opened up to possibilities we had not previously considered. Our self-perception as a species was constantly being put into perspective, without ever underestimating it.

Today, one can find many excellent scientific reports and impressive videos on this topic online, most of which have been published in the last five years. Fifty years ago, Joan McIntyre’s book was a completely new source of insight and inspiration, at least for OUBEY, to whom and to whales and dolphins we have therefore dedicated a special Spark in the OUBEY MINDSPACE:

By the way: 50 million years ago, the ancestors of whales and dolphins still lived on land when, during the Eocene epoch, a major climate change began that caused temperatures and water levels to rise drastically. 10 million years later, they had completely and successfully shifted their habitat to the sea. A unique and impressive evolutionary process that, as a species-specific life and world experience spanning such a long period of time, can justify the idea that something like consciousness may indeed have emerged in this process—whatever that may be.

OUBEY would have been delighted to learn that India officially recognized dolphins as non-human persons in 2013. And even more so that in 2024, the New Zealand Maori, together with the indigenous peoples of Tahiti and the Cook Islands, adopted a joint declaration declaring whales to be legal persons.

If you’ve read this episode, you can perhaps imagine how thrilled and happy I was when nature and whale filmmaker Daniel Opitz, founder of the Ocean Mind Foundation, promised me in 2011 an encounter with an original image of OUBEY on camera in his second home, Maui, Hawaii. Here you can watch the video of this extraordinary encounter.

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There are six rooms in OUBEY MINDSPACE. Each of them contains five different Mind Sparks, which in turn contain various impulses. Behind every Spark and every impulse is a story about OUBEY and what interested and inspired him. I will tell these stories here.

At this point, I would like to thank the Kubikfoto³ team for the great design of OUBEY MINDSPACE, which has already won three prestigious international design awards – most recently the Red Dot Award 2025.