Theos-Talk Archives (September 1995 Message tl00305)

Brenda:

>There's another striking difference between mankind as a group and plants,
>animals, or minerals. The range of difference in the body of the animal
>means some of the animals couldn't possibly be found to exist in a crocodile
>for instance and then a flea and then a puppy dog. There's no way people
>would expect their puppy dog to reincarnate as a flea. Animals are in
>groups, but not groups that would intermingle as people do. Mankind is
>basically one family in a sense that animals, plants, and minerals are not.
>Couldn't this difference cause a theory to form that would distinguish the
>souls of these kingdoms from the souls of men?

Because of our particular stage of evolution, we have established ties
with kindred Monads and tend to come into birth in a certain "group".
We are Human Monads because our stage of evolution had taken us to the
point where that form of experience is suitable for us. The Human Kingdom,
though, is like a grade in a school. Students may come and go, but the
grade remains. A few years from now, none of the same students will be
in that grade. The grade is not made up of the students, they participate
in its structure.

When we are talking about a particular class of beings, it is in this
sense. The nature of the class is determined externally to its members,
it acts as an collection of archetypes that its members are subject to.

So far, the idea of a group is fine. The idea falls apart when we attempt
to consider the group and all its participants as a single being, with
a common pool of shared karma. It is silly to say that a Monad, having
justed experienced a lifetime as a cat, will merge back into a group soul,
sharing all its karma and personal experience with all the other members
of such a soul. A Monad is eternal, both into the future and into the
distant past. A new Monad is no more created at the birth of a human
child than it is from "fission from a group soul at the point of
individualization." Both are misconceptions that arise from a lack of
a proper appreciation of the distinction between finite and infinite things.

We learn in our study of Theosophy that evolution proceeds through the
Kingdoms of nature, with successive unfolding of consciousness and the
powers to express oneself in life. The order is not arbitrary, but is
due to the structure and essential nature of consciousness. We acquire
certain qualities as Elementals, then Minerals, Plants, Animals, Humans,
then Dhyani-Chohans. Even before we started this evolution as Monads in
the lowest Elemental Kingdom, we existed, apart from any association
with any Plant or Animal "group soul".

-- Eldon