Kingdoms of Life

The Kingdoms of Life in biology are the highest rank among the taxonomic categories, grouping together all forms of life that have certain fundamental characteristics in common. In modern science, organisms are classified into one of six Kingdoms of life. These Kingdoms are Archaebacteria, Eubacteria, Protista, Fungi, Plantae, and Animalia. Sometimes Archaebacteria and Eubacteria are grouped together under the single kingdom of "Monera".

The Esoteric philosophy considers that life pervades the whole universe and therefore includes minerals among its kingdoms. It also regards human beings as separate from animals, due to the former having acquired manas. Finally, it describes the existence of three non physical kingdoms. Thus, we find seven categories that include three elemental kingdoms, mineral, plants, animals, and human beings.

Animal kingdom

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

In the Theosophical view, there is a moral responsibility for unnecessarily killing animals by civilized people who should know better:

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.