Animals

[ARTICLE UNDER CONSTRUCTION]
[ARTICLE UNDER CONSTRUCTION]

The Animal Kingdom is the previous evolutionary stage to human beings.

Group-Soul evolution

"Group-Soul Evolution" by James S. Perkins

James S. Perkins has written:

Animal consciousness is not only evolved through individual forms, but through group experience and growth. This group development occurs throughout the third chain, particularly during the seven periods during which the Life wave occupies its Globe D. Animals are united in groups, each animal sharing the soul life of its group...

The group-soul is an admirable conveyance for sharing the collective experience of numbers of animals. A number of lions may be seen linked together in a single sphere of consciousness [in the illustration at right].

Through the common shelter of this immortal group-soul that is experiencing life and death in any forms, there is a constant stimulation of consciousness in all the creatures attached to the group. the sheltering feature of group-soul existence indicates that the animal is not aware of aloneness...

In the illustration the star Monad above is radiating its influence into the sphere through the medium of an angelic presence that represents the immortal group-soul intelligence. This entity is visualized gathering the essential quality of each member's experiences and redistributing it to the whole group...

Into this arena of mutual existence radiates the dominant ray influence from the Monad. The ray factor is a decisive feature in group-soul evolution. A first-ray Monad evolves through a first-ray group-soul; and only first-ray animals are attached to it. Lions will be found only in a first-ray group-soul. All animals are evolving their natures on one or another of the seven rays.

Thus it may be seen that there is a common influx of spiritual forces from above, in addition to the flow of impacts from all the environmental experiences pouring into the group-soul. Together these unfold the lion's characteristic nature and action...

There is individual progress in the group-soul. A domestic animal in a group-soul, due to human association, advances more rapidly than others of his type that remain in the wild kingdom. When this individual progress occurs, the group-soul may be reduced in number... Thus the animal unit of consciousness gradually approaches entry into the human kingdom.

Domestic animals

The contact of humans with domestic animals has an effect in the development and evolution of animals. This effect may be positive or negative. In a lecture given in 1895, Annie Besant stated:

Supposing that you take a puppy, and supposing that from that puppy's birth you keep it continually with yourselves, and you do not permit it to associate with the lower creatures, but you keep it with yourselves. Some lonely person, for instance, takes a puppy, and it is always with him or her; what is the result? The result is that in that puppy, as it grows up, there is developed a startling amount of some quality that you are forced to call Intelligence. You will develop in it a limited reason; you will develop in it a limited memory; you will develop in it a limited judgment. Now, these are qualities of the mind, not qualities of Kama. How is it that in this lower animal these qualities are developed? They are developed artificially by the playing upon it of the human intelligence. To that animal the mind in you to some extent plays the part which the Son of Mind plays to Humanity; and thrown out from the comparatively developed Intelligence in man, these rays, these energetic rays of mental influence, vitalize the germ in the Kama of the animal and so produce artificially, as it were, an infant mind.

However, she later amended this statement saying:

It is with much inner pleasure that I find that a statement current in Theosophical circles, and repeated by me above, is incorrect in fact. It seems, with regard to some animals at least--as the dog and the cat--that the development caused "by the playing upon it of human intelligence" is well caused, and lifts the animal forward, so that the germinating individuality does not return to animal incarnation, but awaits elsewhere the period at which its further development shall become possible. The "forcing" is therefore helpful and beneficial, not harmful, and we may rid ourselves of the incongruous idea that, in a universe built on and permeated by Love, the out-welling of compassion and love to our younger relatives is injurious to them.

And yet, there seems to be a limit beyond which human affection may stimulate wrong aspects in the animal. Again, in Annie Besant's words:

Large numbers of the higher animals in a state of domestication have ... really become separate re-incarnating entities, although not as yet possessing a causal body―the mark of what is usually called individualisation. The envelope derived from the Group-Soul serves the purpose of a causal body... Following the analogy of human ante-natal life, we see that this stage corresponds with its last two months. A seven-months’ babe may be born and may survive, but it will be stronger, healthier, more vigorous, if it profits for yet another two months by its mother’s shielding and nourishing life. So is it better for the normal development of the Ego that it should not too hastily burst the envelope of the Group-Soul, but should still absorb life through it, and strengthen from its constituents the finest part of its own mental body. When that body has reached its limit of growth under these shielded conditions, the envelope disintegrates into the finer molecules of the sub-plane above it, and becomes, as above said, part of the causal body.

It is the knowledge of these facts that has sometimes caused occultists to warn people who are very fond of animals not to be exaggerated in their affection, nor to show it in unwise ways. The growth of the animal may be unhealthily forced, and its birth into individuality be hastened out of due time. Man, in order to fill rightly his place in the world, should seek to understand nature and work with her laws, quickening indeed their action by the co-operation of his intelligence, but not quickening it to the point whereat growth is made unhealthy and its product frail and “out of season”. It is true that the Lord of Life seeks human co-operation in the working out of evolution, but the co-operation should follow the lines which His Wisdom has laid down.

An example of how an exaggerated domestication may have negative effects on the animal was given by C. W. Leadbeater:

[In the case of] the lap-dog who is pampered by some foolish mistress so that he gradually loses all the canine virtues, and becomes an embodiment of selfishness and love of ease, [the owner is] developing the lower instead of the higher instincts in the creatures committed to his care, thereby making bad karma himself, and leading a group-soul to make bad karma also. Man's duty towards the dog is clearly to evolve in him devotion, affection, intelligence and usefulness, and to repress kindly but firmly every manifestation of the savage and cruel side of his nature, which a brutalised humanity has for ages so sedulously fostered.

Perhaps, the correct attitude is one in which humans offer animals love and care, stimulating in them higher qualities, while at the same time avoiding to over-anthropomorphize them, remembering that they are still part of the animal kingdom.

As it is today well-known, the affection of an animal for a human being can have beneficial effects on the latter. C. W. Leadbeater explained:

For thousand of years man has lived so cruelly that all wild creatures fear and avoid him, so the influence upon him of the animal kingdom is practically confined to that of the domestic animals. In our relations with these our influence over them is naturally far more potent than theirs over us, yet this latter is by no means to be ignored. A man who has really made friends with an animal is often much helped and strengthened by the affection lavished upon him. Being more advanced, a man is naturally capable of greater love than an animal is; but the animal's affection is usually more concentrated, and he is far more likely to throw the whole of his energy into it than a man is.
The very fact of the man's higher development gives him a multiplicity of interests, among which his attention is divided; the animal often pours the entire strength of his nature into one channel, and so produces a most powerful effect. The man has a hundred other matters to think about, and the current of his love consequently cannot but be variable; when the dog or the cat develops a really great affection it fills the whole of his life, and he therefore keeps a steady stream of force always playing upon its object--a factor whose value is by no means to be ignored.

Regarding those who are cruel to animals, or induce cruelty in animals, he added:

Association with man does not always improve the animal or tend to evolve it in the right direction. The sporting dog is taught by the hunter to be far more savage and brutal than it could ever become in any form of life that could come to it by nature; for the wild animal kills only to satisfy his hunger, and it is only man who introduces into animal life the wickedness of killing for the sake of the lust of destruction. However much his intelligence may be developed, it would have been far better for this unfortunate creature if he had never come into contact with humanity; for through him his group-soul has now made karma--karma of the most evil kind, for which other dogs which are expressions of that group-soul will have to suffer later in order that gradually the savagery may be weeded out.

The man who is so wicked as to provoke by cruelty the hatred and fear of domestic animals becomes by a righteous retribution the centre of converging forces of antipathy; for such conduct arouses deep indignation among nature-spirits and other astral and etheric entities, as well as among all right-minded men, whether living or dead.

Animal rights

In the Theosophical view, there is a moral responsibility for unnecessarily killing animals by civilized people. As Master K.H. wrote:

As it is no fault of the former, if born a "savage" with an instinct to kill — though it caused the death of many an innocent animal — why, if with it all, he was a loving father, son, husband, why should he not also enjoy his share of reward? The case would be quite different if the same cruel acts had been done by an educated and civilized person, from a mere love of sport. The savage in being reborn would simply take a low place in the scale, by reason of his imperfect moral development; while the Karma of the other would be tainted with moral delinquency.

See also

• Animal Kingdom
• Vegetarianism

Additional Resources

Articles

• Animals and Us: Quotations from Ahimsa, by Nathaniel Altman
• "Men and Animals" in Evolution and Occultism Ch. 12 by Annie Besant
• Have Animals Souls? by H. P. Blavatsky
• Why Do Animals Suffer? by H. P. Blavatsky
• Do Horses Gallop in Their Sleep: The Problem of Animal Consciousness by Matt Cartmill
• Animals and Humans: Evolving Together in Conscious Universe by Judith Hensel
• About Killing Animals by William Q. Judge
• Reincarnation in Animals by William Q. Judge
• "Boids," the Group Soul, and Universal Brotherhood by George M. Young
• Group Soul in Theosophy World