Animals

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

Animal rights

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.

Domestic animals

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.

See also

• Animal Kingdom
• Vegetarianism

Online Resources

Articles

• Animals and Us: Quotations from Ahimsa, by Nathaniel Altman
• Men and Animals 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