The Soul Life of Animals
Love, Consciousness, and the Animal-Human Relationship
Debates over whether or not animals are self-aware beings can get heated, and deciding that they are would require major legal and ethical changes in how they are treated. In The Soul Life of Animals, Hanne Jahr takes a metaphysical approach to the question, bolstered by science, and raises a question that takes the debate even further: do animals have souls?
Jahr’s book focuses on stories about her relationships with animals and is informative and entertaining. It includes the intriguing opinions of esoteric spiritual teachers, from Rudolph Steiner to Alice Bailey, regarding the nature of animals and their evolutionary partnership with humans.
A challenge to the attitudes and beliefs of religious and cultural systems that teach that animals are meant to serve human needs and purposes, the book opens the door to related questions about the way human beings are treated when they are considered less-than by those with power. Jahr’s perspective is at once grand and intimate as she declares what all those who know animals know: that animals are aware, have feelings, and are capable of forming deep and lasting relationships.
Arguing that humans and animals are on an evolutionary path together, this work will help readers to individuate and play a key role in raising the animals they’ve chosen as pets to their next evolutionary level. But it works both ways.
Making a compelling case that human beings can learn from animals and become better people in the process, The Soul Life of Animals is about living from the heart, expressing humility, being gentle, causing no harm, and unconditional love within the great brotherhood of all that lives.
Reviewed by
Kristine Morris
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
