Chapter 71 - The Animal Deva

The Animal Deva brings the book’s final human teachings back into direct relationship with the living kingdoms. The voice is not human, though it uses human intellect in order to communicate. Its source is deep within the animal kingdom, and it speaks not for one species, but as an overview of the whole animal realm. The image is of a vast planning centre, concerned with the rhythm, acceleration, reduction and evolution of species.

The first movement is reassurance. Human concern for vulnerable species is acknowledged and appreciated. Such concern matters. Yet the teaching asks the reader to hold that concern within a wider evolutionary view. If one animal species reaches the end of its natural cycle, another may begin quietly, humbly and almost unnoticed. The animal kingdom is not pictured as abandoned to collapse. It is held within a powerful organising energy that nurtures and stimulates development as needed.

This does not mean indifference to loss. The chapter recognises that the period of transition affecting mankind will also affect animals intensely. Some species may close their chapters because they cannot thrive in the new era. Others may pass through accelerated change, with developments that once required thousands of generations taking place within a far shorter span. The animal kingdom is alive within the same movement of transformation that the rest of the book has been tracing.

The teaching becomes especially practical when it turns to the bond between animals and human beings. The animal kingdom is described as the nearest and most vitally linked to mankind. Human beings are descended from it and dependent upon it, but the relationship is not only biological or material. Mankind is also a powerful role model for animals. Human physical, emotional and psychic activity deeply influences the animal life around it.

That idea gives responsibility to human thought. The attitudes people carry toward animals are not treated as private opinions. They are transmissions into the animal kingdom. As mankind refines those thoughts and becomes more aware of what it sends out, animals can begin to respond in a new way. Relationship becomes reciprocal, not in the sentimental sense of projecting human feelings onto animals, but in the deeper sense of subtle influence and mutual adjustment.

The future imagined here is one of deeper involvement. Human beings may become able to sense intuitively what animal species are experiencing and to understand more of the logic of their evolution and behaviour. That is an illumination for mankind, because it opens the animal world not as background life, but as a related kingdom with its own intelligence, cycles and movement.

The tone of the Animal Deva is hopeful without being simplistic. It gives comfort, but also asks for refinement. It does not say that no species will suffer or disappear. It says that the animal kingdom has its own guiding power, and that human beings must learn to participate with greater care. Hope here is not passive. It requires a change in the thought patterns mankind sends toward animals.

Near the close of the book, The Animal Deva restores the larger context for human evolution. Mankind cannot awaken separately from the creatures around it. The animal kingdom is close, responsive and deeply linked to human conduct. To meet it consciously is to move another step toward the harmony between kingdoms that Loving Wisdom from the Universe has been building from the beginning.

The chapter also helps prevent a purely human-centred reading of the final sequence. Mankind’s purpose, evolution and unity are not presented as separate from animals, plants or the Earth. The animal kingdom stands beside humanity as a close companion in transition. To care for animals, and to become aware of the thoughts sent toward them, is part of learning how to live within a larger family of life.