Theos-Talk Archives (October 1999 Message tl00183)

Hi Dallas,

> Oct 13
>
> Dallas asks:	RE  REINCARNATION INTO ANIMALS OF HUMAN SOUL
>
> Dear Katinka:
>
> Where have you ever found that HPB said that the human soul would
> reincarnate in an animal?
I don't remember where, but I suppose it was the Secret
Doctrine or the Key to theosophy, because I read about it a
long time ago. What she said was that very egoistical
people: black magicians who give up all unselfishness, love
and other higher aspirations, glide off, down the
evolutionary road the rest of us is climbing. They lose all
contact with their higher selves, and eventually the manas
also looses speed, untill it disappears and the
consciousness goes into an animal.

> As far as I know the "skandhas" (the "life-atoms" or  little lives)
> that we impress with animal-like feelings and thoughts may be
> attracted for a while to animals -- where they experience an
> embodiment of the Kamic quality present in such animals - but for the
> actual HUMAN SOUL  "Manas" to incarnate in an animal form -- never.

> The Theosophical teaching is"  Once a Man, always a Man."
I would modify that into
"Once a man, usually always a Man."
> HPB wrote an extensive article on the subject of the "animal soul"
> under the article title
> HAVE ANIMALS SOULS?  "Theosophist Jan, Feb, March 1886.

> Again in LUCIFER for May 1888 HPB wrote WHY DO ANIMALS SUFFER?  There
> she deals with vivisection and human cruelty to animals.

> But in neither of those 2 important articles does she say that the
> HUMAN SOUL  (Manas) incarnates in animals.  But I may be wrong and you
> have another reference that contradicts that ?
You're right there. The manas does not incarnate into the
animal, but the entity that once *had* a human soul or
manas, can reincarnate into an animal. At least that is how
I understood it.

Katinka
----------------------
NHL Leeuwarden
hesse600@tem.nhl.nl