[Spiritmessenger]

Silver Birch on when animals die and their evolution

Question
Do some animals spend their whole time with their human friends on the other side or is their real home on the animal sphere?

Answer
It depends, because love is the index. You know that love determines the survival of animals. It is the love that exists between the animal and the person that enables the animal to obtain the temporary consciousness that exist beyond the grave of matter. If an animal and I do not like the word "owner" because no one owns another soul, the one whom it has served are in the world of spirit together, then the home of the animal is the home of the individual who has always loved it. It stays where love is, for love is the link that binds it to the one who loves it. It has no necessity go to the animal plane, because it has its home. Those who dwell in the animals sphere are the ones who come to the world of spirit before the masters, or owners, as you call them, arrive in our world, because it is necessary that someone shall take care of them. Otherwise they would be distracted, being cut off from the love, which not only warmed their hearts but breathed the temporary immortality into them. Where the animal comes to our world preceding the one who loved it, who gave it shelter and taught it all the habits of memory, of reason, of judgment and affection, it goes to the animal world to await the time when it can greet the one it has missed. There it is put in charge of those specially trained to look after animals, just as you have trainers in your world to care for animals when their masters and mistresses are away.

Question
Will you describe what it is an animal obtains from human contact that makes it survive?

Answer
In the long line in evolution, at some stage that Great Spirit or the law, breathed into the animal and it became a living soul, conscious, aware of its own existence. Then came the dawn of reason; intelligence bloom; there was judgment, the ability to reflect, to decide, to weigh and to consider. But, potentially, all that existed no matter how far back in the line of evolution you go. It requires the breath of the Great Spirit to awaken it. Just as the Great Spirit enabled a divine spark to become a flame, so you, by love, transfer that process to the animal who lives within the shelter of your affection. You are part of the Great Spirit, having the power within you to transfer the tribute of spirit to the next in line of evolution, so that by your association, by radiating love, you awake that consciousness which, in time, through the process of evolution, would reach its own apex. Love is the keynote in all life. Death cannot still the voice of love in humans or in animals. Love is the driving force throughout the whole universe; love controls and governs all life; and love seeks to work through man towards all other creatures, whether they be his equal or his inferiors. The love that emanates from man to the lesser beings he embraces in his heart, the dog, the cat and the pets- cannot be ended by "death." It is love that determines that life must go on because love goes on.

Question
How long does the survival of an animal last? Is it as long as that of a human being?

Answer
No, there is this difference. At some stage the animal and human evolution inevitably part company. It may take, as you measure time, hundreds or thousands of years, but their rates of spiritual evolution are unequal. The animal has to be left behind because it cannot keep pace with the growing soul that restlessly struggles towards the greater light. Watch you have passed from the Vale of matter and accustomed yourself to conditions of the spiritual life, once you have realised that the ties which bind you to earth are severed, the desire to progress, the desire to unfold the surging divinity within becomes quickened. You seek to unfold all the qualities, which, by their practice, will enable you to be a greater service wherever you are. The higher you climb in the realm of spiritual unfoldment, the more difficult it is for the animal to keep pace with you. And so the love which kindled for a while a flame that burned beyond "death" gradually becomes attenuated. The flame flickers and it merges in the end with the group soul of that species.

Question
Does that mean that the animal loses its personality and individuality?

Answer
Yes. That is the clear distinction between the two evolutions, because the animal, as a group, has not yet reached the stage of evolution when the whole group is individualised. Otherwise it would cease to be animal; it would have then reached the stage of the human being. But because you enable it to jump the scale of evolution, because you enable it to advance by love, it means that it must return to the group out of which it is formed.

Question
It sounds rather unfair that, because the animal has earned individuality for itself, it must return and lose what it has gained.

Answer
No, because it has contributed to the group spirit and has enabled the process evolution to be advanced by its fraction of evolution. It contributes to the common stock. It adds a quota to the pool that before did not exist. In order to help the whole. The more such sacrifices are made, the quicker the group's soul advances towards the stage where it leaves the animal behind and earns the evolution which makes it now ready for individuals souls in human form.

Question
Is that when they definitely become incarnated?

Answer
There are two kinds of incarnation. There is the old soul re-embodied in the world of matter and there is what you call the, "new soul," starting its first phase in the world of matter as an individual.

Question
Do you mean as a human individual?

Answer
Yes. They are both spirit, they are both conscious spirit, they are both individuals spirit. But one is an old soul, returning to complete or help complete a cycle; the other is a new soul on the first rung of the ladder. The new one comes from the group, the groups that once was animal, pool of spirit which has been through all the evolutionary stages and animal, of bird, of fish, of reptile, right back to the lowest slime on earth.

That is Theosophical teaching.

I do not care whose belief in his. You should not tell me about labels. I am not interested. All these facetious critics who do not desire knowledge, who only seek to exhibit their vaunted intelligence, do not realise the simple truth. You do not bring a spider into your home and give it love, do you? You do not bring a beetled into your home and give it love and try to serve it. You do not give it companionship and the warmth of your heart, do you? No, because you recognise the gulf that is fixed between you, because you know instinctively that it is far away from you in the scale of evolution. You bring those whom you call the domestic animals- the dog, the cat, sometimes the monkey- because you feel a kinship with them. They are just below you in the line of evolution. They are ready for your love or affection because they are awaiting the next stage in their evolution, which is incarnation as humans.

Love light and blessings to all
Spiritmessenger