Harimedia Forum

Good day, dear Hari!
The question I would like to ask You is about world of animals and plants. Yet I can not find a clear understanding: What kinds of souls do aspire to take birth in the bodies of plants and animals? Saying animals, I mean all representatives of Fauna: bacterium, insects, inhabitants of water, birds, mammals! I wonder because the quantity of all beings I mentioned above is more than people in several times. Do those souls also plan their future lifetimes between lives? What kind of spiritual way they have? Why do they choose to have birth in the bodies of animals and plants? Of course I remember from Bhagavat-Gita about evolution through 8400000 forms of life. Is it so?
I wonder especially domestic animals. People live with them, love them, and care about them. A person often has pet, which like his only friend, his part of life. There is an opinion that pets take a part of karma of its masters. You could say the same about plants: plants react on people's contact, on concerning, on good attitude. Such souls live in a close contact with a person. Could they be in one spiritual group? Do we plan between lifetimes our meeting with them in the next life? Will we meet them after life?
The other example people kill and eat the animals. Do the souls of these animals know before birth about their destination? If they know, what is a stimulus for them to take such a birth? The same about the plants we eat. Could You explain it to me? Thank You in advance.

As I have said before, there are two effective means to answer a question: a) by quoting some external source of knowledge, or b) by speaking from your own realization, experience, and understanding. There are many sources of knowledge outside of ourselves and we use them all the time, but I am not aware of many that could answer this question from experience. As far as I am aware, the only people who attempt to definitively answer questions such as these are religionists who reach into their scripture to reply.

You are already aware of the scriptural points of view, so I will not attempt to use such sources; neither would I be comfortable doing so. I may or may not agree with them, but that is beside the point. That leaves me with the option of speaking from my experience. Admittedly this experience is limited when it comes to my direct perception of the motivations of and decisions made by plants and animals before this life. This limits my capacity to answer this question.

Most animals respond very well to love. If someone cares for them and provides them with their essentials, they reciprocate. But this applies mainly to the more domesticated variety like household pets, horses, cows or whatever. Wild animals might also fall into this category were there to be someone like St Francis of Assisi to love them. Considering this, we could understand these creatures are comfortable in the role of supporting humans and receiving support from humans and perhaps this is a reason for them to be what they are. But then again, there are animals that will never feel such support. What would motivate them? I cannot say.

My experience is that pets absorb your pain and give you love. They enjoy your pleasure and wish to be a part of it. When I see my dog, for example, I see a creature that is very comfortable being a dog. I also see that I would love to see and be with him in the afterlife and in the next life. Such a nice doggie he is! Some say they wait for us. Some say they take birth again quickly and one should go out and find another that looks in our eyes the same way. I have no direct experience of this.

I do know that the creation of a body is directly connected to the consciousness of the soul that shall inhabit the body. As that consciousness evolves, the body will follow. We see this in our own lives and in the lives of others. This lends credence to the concept of spiritually based evolution through the species. However, one wonders how a single celled creature's consciousness evolves sufficiently to allow it to graduate to a higher form of life? This makes the idea of the evolution of consciousness difficult to apply universally, but not impossible if one allows for forces to be acting to which we presently have no connection, perhaps something similar to Carlos Casteneda's fascination with the consciousness of crystalline forms.

To deal with this difficulty, scriptures usually indicate the automatic evolution of souls to higher forms until they come to the human form when they can be more in charge of their evolution and the bodies they accept. Although this handles the complexity surrounding single celled organisms evolving (or others -- use your imagination), it is not a concept that is logically satisfying for it creates these incredibly long periods of time for all souls to move from the lowest to the human forms. I sometimes like the idea that souls are just happy being what they are, some in a manner I cannot understand, and only move when they wish to, again, using a mechanism I do not understand. But this idea of mine is not meant to be a contradictory philosophical creation within a radical school of thought; it is just an idea.

Then again, here is an interesting thought: What if the evolution takes place in-between lives by the spiritually aware soul? What if the experiences as a single celled organism are not in themselves sufficient to create changes in consciousness (for after all, there is practically none) but rather it is the soul's conscious capacity after the death of that cell that propels it into a higher form? But which soul could tolerate making the single step into a two celled creature and not insist on a more developed form? Not me!

Therefore my answer is useless for you. I am sorry about that, but this is all I can honestly say with confidence.