The Rishika Of Gombe: A Shraddhanjali For Jane Goodall

The passing of Jane Goodall happened peacefully in her sleep on October 1, 2025. It was not the extinguishing of a light, but the mahasamadhi of just such a modern-day rishika, the conscious merging of an enlightened soul back into the embrace of Prakriti, that she so deeply revered and came to understand.

Her life was not merely a scientific career; it was a sacred pilgrimage, and the forests of Gombe were her both her gurukul and Karmabhumi.

The Beginnings

A young English girl in Bournemouth, dreaming of Africa confiding in her stuffed chimpanzee doll, Jubilee, was answering a deeper call. This yearning would lead her, improbably, to the eminent paleoanthropologist Dr. Louis Leakey.

His decision to send a 26-year-old woman with no university degree into the Tanzanian wilderness was too radical for that time, perhaps even today. The scientific establishment of the 1960s was dominated by a rigid behaviourism that viewed animals as mere automatons, their inner lives a 'black box' irrelevant to serious inquiry.

Leakey intuited that this reductionist paradigm was a profound barrier to true understanding. He therefore sought a mind 'uncluttered by academia', one whose innate, holistic perception had not been trained out of them.

When Jane Goodall arrived on the shores of Lake Tanganyika on July 14, 1960, she was not just beginning a research project; she was entering a sacred grove to commence her life's tapasya.

Her methodology, which would later be condemned by her Cambridge professors as sentimental 'anthropomorphism', was in fact a profound act of a deeper perception that acknowledged the continuum of the mind.

Her very first act of 'scientific heresy' was in rejecting the cold convention of assigning numbers and instead giving the chimpanzees names: David Greybeard, Goliath, Flo, Flint. She made a radical declaration of their personhood.

It was not sentimentality, but an understanding that Darwin had displayed in his 'The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals' (1872). Nevertheless, Science has made a wedge between humans and other animals using various criteria including tool making. The non-human animal was always an 'it'.

Tool Making Non-Human Animal

This perception soon shattered the bedrock of human arrogance. In the autumn of 1960, she witnessed David Greybeard strip a twig of its leaves to fish for termites. He had not just used a tool, he had made one.

This single observation collapsed the prevailing definition of 'Man the Toolmaker'. Louis Leakey's triumphant, iconic response ('Now we must redefine tool, redefine man, or accept chimpanzees as human!') marked the moment science was forced to confront a truth: the line between human and animal is not a rigid wall but a porous membrane.

Her work systematically dismantled the artificial barriers of human exceptionalism, demonstrating that qualities we considered unique are matters of degree, not kind. As her research deepened, she painted a rich portrait of their lives, documenting complex social bonds, shifting political alliances, deep friendships, and the powerful, lifelong love between mothers and their offspring.

The very essence of Jane Goodall's genius was her 'science of empathy', a methodology that was both her most powerful tool and the source of the fiercest criticism against her. When she arrived at Cambridge University in 1961 to pursue a Ph.D., she was met with stark disapproval.

The assembled professors informed her that she had done everything wrong: she could not speak of animal personalities, minds, or emotions, for these were the cardinal sins of a scientist. Her empathetic approach was labelled hopelessly anthropomorphic.

Yet, her mentor, Professor Robert Hinde, initially a strong critic until he visited Gombe field, possessed the wisdom to see the value in her unorthodox method. He taught her not to abandon her intuition, but to translate it into the language of science.

When she described a young chimp, Fifi, as 'jealous', Hinde advised a simple but profound reframing: 'I suggest you say that Fifi behaved in such a way that if she had been a human child we would say she was jealous'. This linguistic key allowed her radical, empathy-driven observations to become defensible to the establishment.

Through decades of dedicated work, she witnessed the full spectrum of the nature of chimpanzees, holding up a startling mirror to humanity. She saw profound altruism, such as the adoption of orphaned youngsters by unrelated adults, and documented the deep, nurturing love of mother-infant bonds.

But she also witnessed a shocking darkness. Between 1974 and 1978, a once-unified chimpanzee community splintered, leading to what she could only describe as a brutal, primitive 'war'.

She documented organised 'border patrols', systematic lethal attacks, and a deliberate campaign of annihilation by one group against their former companions. This was not random aggression but organised, proto-tribalistic violence between related groups over territory and dominance.

The Gombe war suggests that the archetypal struggles that define human mythologies so universally may not be our invention, but an ancient inheritance, revealing the evolutionary bedrock upon which our own conceptual justifications may have been built.

Chimpanzee 'spirituality'

Among Jane Goodall's most evocative observations were the chimpanzee 'waterfall dances'. These moments offer a profound glimpse into what may be the very origins of religious experience.

She described how an adult male, approaching a spectacular waterfall, would become visibly aroused, his hair bristling. As the roar of the water grew louder, he would perform a magnificent display at its base, standing upright, swaying rhythmically, stamping in the rushing water, and hurling great rocks in a powerful, focused ritual that could last for ten to fifteen minutes.

Goodall herself speculated on the meaning of this behaviour, asking, 'Is it not possible that these performances are stimulated by feelings akin to wonder and awe?' She imagined the chimpanzee's inner world, contemplating the ceaseless, powerful flow of the water, and mused that if they possessed a spoken language, these feelings 'might not they lead to an animistic, pagan worship of the elements'.

It is a humbling experience to see a primatologist in the twenty first century, because of her decades of dedicated work in close proximity to nature, express naturally and spontaneously the wisdom that she discovered in a language that echoes the Vedic Rishis. Here she explains what can only be considered as a mystical experience even as she was observing the Chimpanzee family:

That is Advaita through primatology!

She continues:

From Rishika to Karmayogi

For over two decades, Jane Goodall was a scientist, a rishika in her forest hermitage. But in 1986, a single event catalysed her transformation from a detached observer into a global activist, compelling her to walk the path of Karma Yoga, the path of selfless action.

The turning point was a conference where she was confronted with undercover footage of chimpanzees held in barren, concrete-and-steel isolation chambers in biomedical research laboratories. The sight of the suffering of these beings, whom she knew to be sentient, intelligent, and deeply social, made the role of a neutral observer morally impossible.

Her declaration, 'I knew I had to do something... It was payback time', was the sacred vow, dedicating her life to action without attachment to the fruits of her labour.

The Jane Goodall Institute's community-centred conservation model, Tacare, is a form of Seva. By understanding that one cannot protect the animals without uplifting the local human communities, she practised an integrated, holistic service that reflects the principle of universal interconnectedness.

Her most enduring legacy of service may be Roots & Shoots, the global youth programme she founded in 1991. This initiative, which empowers young people to undertake local projects for people, animals, and the environment, is a global effort to cultivate a sense of universal harmony and compassionate action in the next generation.

To carry this message, she made the ultimate sacrifice: she left the forest she loved to travel nearly 300 days a year, well into her 90s, for the good of the world. Her famous mantra, 'Every individual matters. Every individual has a role to play. Every individual makes a difference', is the very essence of the concept of Swabhava and Swadharma and its impact on the whole.

When the Scientist Met the Saint: A Confluence of Compassion

The profound and symbolic connection between Jane Goodall and the Hindu spiritual leader Mata Amritanandamayi, known as 'Amma', represents a sacred confluence of two great paths to truth.

A powerful link was forged when both were honoured with the Gandhi-King Award for Non-Violence, Goodall in 2001 and Amma the following year in 2002. This award connects them through the supreme Dharmic principle of Ahimsa (non-harm in thought, word, and deed), a value central to the legacies of both Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It established their common ground in a universal ethical framework with deep Dharmic roots.

When presenting the award to Amma, Goodall made a statement of extraordinary spiritual clarity:

This was not mere praise. It was a profound spiritual declaration from a woman who had spent a lifetime observing the world with meticulous scientific rigour.

Having arrived at her own experiential understanding of a 'great Spiritual Power' through decades of patient observation in the forest, she recognised the direct, living embodiment of that power's compassionate aspect in Amma.

For a scientist, trained in empiricism and scepticism, to make such a declaration is a remarkable event. Goodall's entire career was a battle to have her intuitive, empathetic observations accepted as valid data.

A Soul Merged with the Whole

The life of Jane Goodall was a journey of ever-expanding consciousness. It began with a girl who loved one stuffed chimpanzee and culminated in a woman who embraced the entire planet as her family.

Her legacy is a scientific and spiritual teaching on the truth of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, 'The world is one family'.

Through the convergence of her science, her empathy, and her selfless service, she dissolved the artificial divides between species, communities, and humanity and the natural world.

She revealed a powerful current within Darwinian thought that flows towards a boundless empathy. This, she insisted, was a necessary virtue, whether one was guided by faith or not.

For even if one presupposes 'no God' and 'no soul', she argued, 'evolution had created a remarkable animal—the human animal—during its millions of years of labour', leaving us not as masters of nature, but as beings profoundly indebted to it.

By reclaiming evolutionary science from the grotesque distortions of social Darwinism, eugenics, and racism, she showed that biology in its purest form can lead to a state of spiritual empathy.

Her passing is not a loss to be mourned in despair, but a moksha, a liberation, to be honoured in reverence. The individual consciousness that was Jane Goodall, having fulfilled its dharma and expanded its empathy to encompass all creatures of the planet, has now merged back into the 'great Spiritual Power' she always felt in the forest.

Her spirit endures, not just in memory, but in every tree planted by a Roots & Shoots member, in every act of interspecies compassion she inspired, and in the eternal rustle of the leaves in the sacred forests of Gombe.