What we can learn from animals about spirituality

Our interaction with the animal kingdom can be richly rewarding for both humans and animals, and at other times downright distressing. The writer and artist Hanne Jahr has felt an affinity with animals since childhood and begins from personal experience to offer what the spiritual teachers have told us about animal existence and consciousness. Her main sources are the teachers White Eagle, The Tibetan, Dr Lascelles, Flower Newhouse and Rudolph Steiner, and from their words a profound picture emerges of 'the soul life of animals' - with its limitations, but also demonstrating how developed animal consciousness may actually be. Chapters cover evolution, the various kingdoms within the natural world, angels, animal survival and reincarnation, animal suffering and its consequences, consciousness and communication, pets as healers, 'animals as soul makers', the principle of service, and universal brother- and sisterhood. Hanne balances well the personal and the objective, has researched extensively, and the whole text is illustrated with her own drawings. There is a foreword by Jenny Dent, mother of the White Eagle Lodge, and short contributions from the poet Stephanie Sorrell.