Regarding animal souls and the evolution of animals, is it right that the highest animal, such a nice gentle horse, becomes the lowest type of human being, such as a criminal?
The Guide: No, you cannot say one horse turns into a human being. That is not correct. There are many parts that form a whole. And it does not necessarily have to be a criminal. No, it is not so. It is rather that a person on the lowest level of human development knows very little, is still very blind, and if he becomes a criminal it is only because his free will directs him to give in to the lower part of his nature.
The soul particles incarnated as animals are different aspects of the human inner makeup. Perhaps one horse – though this is but a rough explanation – would represent one aspect, and so on. Because the animal soul is not a whole, it is just a particle of a group soul. Before incarnation, the group souls of the respective animals are collected in the Spirit World and for a long time they are put through an extremely complicated process, which would be impossible to explain to you.
They are made unconscious and their fluids and subtle bodies are dissolved and put through a process where new subtle bodies can form around the original divine spark, nearer to the state that it once was. Then the first incarnation can begin and there is a clean slate. Whatever this being decides, it can do. I realize this is extremely complicated for any of you to understand.
What can an animal learn from having a disease?
The Guide: That is not the point. At that stage, before the human incarnation, there is nothing to learn – it is just something to go through.
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Do animals killed for the purpose of being eaten go into the same sphere as a deceased pet?
The Guide: It does not make any difference for what reason an animal dies. It is the same as with a human being. The sphere of a human being coming into the Spirit World is not determined by the kind of death the soul has gone through. The sphere is determined by the development and fulfillment of each existence.
What it is like for an animal to wake up after it has died? How is this with the group souls?
The Guide: The group soul is to be understood in the sense that an animal is a particle of a whole soul, just as a human being is one half of a complete spirit. The other half, what is called a “double,” may or may not be incarnated. With animals, the split goes further. One entire being consists of many particles which are incarnated in different forms of existence. The lower the development, the further goes the split. As these separated particles develop, they unite and form a whole.
The waking-up process of an animal is very similar to that of the human being. According to the severity of a disease, or of a sudden accident where shock occurs, there may be a longer or shorter period of rest or unconsciousness for the animal. In other cases, the moment the animal slips out of its physical body, it is awake and free. It is happy. It feels light.
It may live for a while in a special animals’ sphere before it is reincarnated. It may visit its former masters. At any rate, it is much happier in the beyond, as a rule, than on Earth. We cannot generalize about animals either. Each case may be a little different, but all animals are taken care of. There are spirits whose task it is to help animals.
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Do animals change from one incarnation to another? For instance, will a cat be a cat in all incarnations?
The Guide: No, of course not. There are developments there too; there are phases every living organism goes through.
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Do animals have karma?
The Guide: You have to remember what the word “karma” means. Karma means effect. An animal is not a creature yet who can determine, choose – in other words, as it is said, it does not have free will. Its karmic possibilities are extremely limited, because the spark of decision, of choice, is so infinitesimally small.
This is very difficult at this period of man’s development to understand, but the time will come later where you all will understand – wherein it will be possible for me to speak of the greater significance of animals. The existence of animal – as all existence – is an expression of ideas.
The earth sphere, is, of course, permeated by the ideas of man. There are mass ideas, race ideas. The originally superior creative spirit, the God spirit, had certain ideas which have come to pass. And then man’s ideas, the smaller segment of the creative spirit, have sometimes tampered with these ideas due to mass images. And animals are often an expression of this. This is as far as I can go.
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Do animals have souls?
The Guide: Yes, indeed. Of course. I would even put it very differently, because saying an animal has a soul or a human being has a soul is put in a misleading way. It is as though the soul is an organ that you possess. The soul is much more than something you have. The soul is something you are.
The body is much rather something that is an appendage to the soul. It is merely a limited momentary expression of it. Animals express the soul, but to a more limited degree of consciousness than the human entity.
Mankind knows very little about the awareness of animals. So why is man considered higher on the evolutionary scale?
The Guide: It is not a question of higher. It is a question of having a greater degree of consciousness. You are putting a moral value on it – a judgmental value – and it is not that way. It is no more that way than you would say an adult is more valuable than the child. It is not true.
An animal has much less destructiveness incarnated into the soul than the human being. It manifests like plants – more than plants, but more or less in that way in the sense that it expresses beautiful divine qualities.
The destructiveness that is there in these entities is not incarnated to anywhere near the degree as in the human being. That is why animals – and I do not wish to put moral connotations on it – are very often thought to be, and actually are, “better.” They lack the viciousness and the deliberate cruelties that human beings have.
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What role have pets such as dogs and cats have played in the spiritual development of people, and vice versa?
The Guide: Animals are the gift of God to man. They are the grace of God to beautify life, especially pets – and other animals, of course. They are truly a gift of the heavens.
There are human beings who perceive the beauty of the universe perhaps easiest at first through animals and plants and nature, and only later through other aspects of Creation, through other human beings, through ideas and creativity. There are other human beings who perceive the beauty of the universe through nature and animal life and plant life last – they are dead to it.
Why it is in the one way or the other way has always, of course, a meaning. The latter category is very likely to deny nature in themselves, or it might also be because nature inwardly is denied. There may be an emphasis on the outer manifestation. It can be either way.
But whatever it may be, to glorify God’s gifts to man is to admire, to be grateful, to appreciate, to enjoy what is given. And when man can begin to see and look around himself and see the beauty in whatever way it comes, it is something blissful. With domestic pets, such as cats and dogs, there’s always an intense exchange of energy and soul relationship, of giving and of loving and of caring, each in their own way. It is a very beautiful phenomenon that helps along the process of evolution.
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