This podcast is based on a question from a listener who asked about karma in relation to animals, whether animals experience karma and what can cause them to be born into extreme suffering.
Mohanji: Hello, friends. Every creation is bound by a duration. Durations bind all creations; they have a beginning, an existence, and an end. This can’t be avoided.
The duration is usually connected to desires, unfulfilled desires. So, in the case of animals, they have pretty much a repetitive lifestyle. They also have relations. They feel as a mother feels for the child. But their equations are slightly different. They are all independent; they are not so emotional like us. Their ownership and patterns of ownerships are only connected to a certain duration, and then they completely change. But for us, we have a continuous ownership pattern. They don’t have that.
Irrespective of what the species is on Earth, we all have love, and we all have fear. So, what is trapped with love or fear tends to be repetitive.
What makes the repetition?
We need to understand the creation. First and foremost, there have been numerous creators from various realms, coming to Earth, and using this Earth as a beautiful platform where they just kind of assemble the elements and created forms, just like a sculptor will do, or an artist will do. They create forms from raw material. The elements were the raw material, and by certain combinations of elements, they created forms. And they had the technology, or they knew how to induce energy into the forms. But all these creations were fully tuned to certain durations, and they were all in tune with nature.
Nature means the environment. They only created beings suitable for different environments. They made the software or what you can call the method, the pattern of their existence, which is rejuvenating and reproductive and also, it keeps maintaining its species by itself, self-supported. And to equalize that (to normalize that) they have created, various beings who would help stabilize the environment, the pattern of the environment. It means if there are many deer; there are some tigers and lions to equalize the deer population, like that. When it is in nature, all beings understand how nature’s law works.
Nature’s law can be simplified into equilibrium, balance. That works. And that is what they are all tuned into.
But human species have shifted from that particular equilibrium pattern of nature and created its own personal equilibrium or the species based on likes and dislikes and various types of protection, alienation, etc. There, they started controlling nature, controlling the beings of nature. Controlling, conquering, torturing, all those things are connected to intellectual supremacy. We made machines to torture beings, to control beings.
Fear
So, we inflicted a lot of fear on this Earth. That is exactly the biggest tragedy that we have unleashed on Earth. Fear. And because of fear, all these beings are not natural. When you are afraid, you’re not natural. When you are in love, you are absolutely natural. So, this fear factor has literally shifted the awareness levels of the Earth, the collective consciousness.
So, do animals have karma?
Yes, they have karma because they have emotions connected to fear or love. When it is love, they have a full expansion, they respond to love very well, are happy, and then they leave. Again, there is a connection; an attachment, a dog gets attached to a family, we get attached to the dog of the family. Like that, there are so many attachments and connections, so that makes them tend to come back, probably in the same format.
Likewise, there are fears, like the dairy industry; abattoirs create a lot of fears and confusions. And out of that, murder and suicide are never a good death. Suicide and murder leave the soul high and dry, wandering, not knowing where to go. They tend to get repeated in the same pattern.
Patterns
The people who inflict such pain in beings also tend to take birth in the same category. They also come and experience what they inflict on others because karma always gives back what you sow. So, this is the pattern. Normally, an animal has a pattern to eat, drink, sleep, rest, procreate and die. It’s a usual pattern; it goes on. But what happens when attachments happen, then it changes, but otherwise, animals accept their fate. They have their life; they have their recreation, procreation. And then they tend to leave without confusion.
So, this pattern will not really fetch them new lives, they don’t have to, but there is a possibility (like you can see there are tribes and clans). There are hierarchies; there are alpha males and all those things. And they all have certain supremacies and certain connections, and they tend to come back into the same format or a similar format. It means a lion could possibly be taking birth as a tiger; there are possibilities of such changes and evolutionary changes also.
So, when a being is interacting with a human being in love for a long period of time, it can enter the species also as another being. All these permutation combinations are possible. We cannot say that this is exactly the pattern. But please understand one thing very clearly; love creates emotions; fear creates emotions. One is positive; one is negative. Both are really detrimental for different incarnations, spiritual incarnations.
Nothing can be written off, saying, “Oh, this won’t happen.” Only when you’re totally liberated from the birth-death cycle, because of detachment, witness hood and also total awareness of who you actually are, (that means your soul consciousness, Atma Bodha), until then, there is no complete liberation. You always tend to come back. So, this is exactly what I mean to say: when patterns are controlling you, you tend to come back with the same patterns, whether you like it or not. This is exactly how it works. I hope this is very clear.
Thank you. This is Mohanji for you.
Transcribed by Ulla Bernholdt
Proofread by Rekha Murali