There’s a common idea in the afterlife literature on animals, which I want to spend a bit of time taking apart. It is often said that when animals die, they return to Group Souls. The idea first popped up in the channeled literature of the 19th century and has periodically resurfaced since then. It gets passed around without much examination. The basic idea is that when animals die, they get re-absorbed back into a humungous Group Soul, which…
Human beings love setting up “us vs. them” divisions, with us on one side and the animals on the other. Traditionally, we’ve done that in three ways – claiming either rationality, emotional life, or morality as our special province. We said, “Human beings are the rational ones; animals are just dumb brutes.” Or, “Humans have deep feelings; animals are just reflexive automatons.” Or, “Humans are the moral ones, made in God’s image. Animals are driven by instinct; they are amoral…
Not long after human beings first started to believe in an afterlife, they started to divide up who is “in” from who is “out” – that is, who qualifies for an eternal soul and who doesn’t, who gets admitted to the afterlife and who gets consigned to the dust bin. I’m most familiar with the Judeo-Christian faith, so it’s easy to reel off examples there. At one time, people of different races were “out;” people of different religious faiths were…