The Theosophical lecturer Miss Clara M. Codd told me that as well as two other people she knew in South Africa, her sister could on occasions hear “the music of the spheres.” One man, who heard it in the wilds of N. Rhodesia, did not at first know what it was. Another man heard it in the mountains near Pretoria in South Africa. “I asked my sister,” Miss Codd continued, “what was the difference between our music and angel music. She said that with our music one could always hear the instrument, like the tap of the piano or the timbre of the human voice, and that our music was in tones and semi-tones, whereas Deva music had no tones or semi-tones but was liquid sound welling out of the whole body of the Deva. I once heard a famous Hungarian gypsy who played like that, with intervals unknown to ordinary music. I think Nature music is something like the wind in the trees. The first cellist of the Hallé orchestra, Mr. John Foulds, tried to reproduce it in sound for us.”
Chapter 17: Group Spirits
It is the group spirits, or group souls, who provide us with the real meaning of that mysterious word “instinct” for they are the directive forces that are present in varying degrees in minerals, plants, insects, birds, and animals and marine life. We use the word as a convenient explanation for the marvellous activities in Nature, which so many of us take for granted, such as the wonders of hibernation and migration; the art of mimicry and camouflage; the engineering feats shown in the construction of beavers’ dams and badgers’ sets; the ingenious structure of moles’ tunnels; the hexagonal formation of bees’ cells; the geometrical lattices of mineral crystals and the spiral patterns of snail shells; the mating periods of birds and beasts and the times to produce their offspring, as well as the methods of finding food and shelter; the wonderful courtship dances of certain birds, and the variety of ways in which the different kinds of birds build their nests; and who taught them their own special songs and calls? How do the carrier and racing pigeons manage to find their way home, and the swallows to come back to their old nesting-places? How is it that at the ebb of the tide the limpets can find the same spot on the rocks that they left when the tide was full? How can some dogs and cats trace their owners over miles of unfamiliar territory? Without some superior intelligence or spiritual guidance, how is it that these creatures of land, sea, and air can display such wisdom and resourcefulness when, unlike us, they are supposed to have no free-will power of reasoning? The answer, of course, lies in the work of the group spirits, and Cyril Scott, the composer and occultist, rightly called them the “Guiding Intelligences” and said that each species or group of plants, insects, birds, and animals is ensouled by such a being, who prompts and stimulates the members of its own group.
In The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception by Max Heindel, who founded the Rosicrucian Fellowship at Oceanside, California, we are told that these group spirits govern their charges from the outside by means of suggestion, working in the blood of the animals through the air inspired, and that the life currents of the group spirits play along the horizontal spines of the animals, while in the case of plants the currents enter from the centre of the earth by way of the roots. He said that migratory birds are guided by the group spirit currents that encircle the earth, and each group spirit directs its charges to fly at the right altitude suitable for that particular group, thus providing the birds with a sort of inner compass.
In a course of lectures “Series 21” published under the title The Spiritual Beings in the Heavenly Bodies and in the Kingdom of Nature, Rudolf Steiner, the Founder of the Anthroposophical Society, also mentioned these group spirits, and said that those of the minerals work in the form of rays from without, inwards, streaming from different parts of cosmic space.
Dr. Annie Besant, one of the great leaders of the Theosophical Society, wrote in her book The Ancient Wisdom that when the form of one of the members of an animal group perished, the experience that it gained through functioning in that vehicle is stored in the spiritual body of the group soul, whose slightly-increased life is poured into the other forms that compose its group. Thus they continue to share the experiences of all the perished forms and, in this way, a race memory is born in the new forms.
In her book The Kingdom of the Shining Ones (Christward Publications, Vista, California), the Rev. Flower A. Newhouse of the Christward Ministry refers to the life currents of the group spirits as “frequencies” or “thought-bands,” and says they are known in the Higher Worlds as “mentor waves.” She tells us that the more highly-developed animals such as the horse, monkey, elephant, dog, and cat are breaking away from the group souls and reaching the stage of individualisation, and when this is achieved their evolution will be much more rapid than that which human beings have known.
Max Heindel also mentioned this in his aforesaid book and explained that it is accounted for by the spiral path of evolution, but to me it is also some well-deserved recompense for their terrible sufferings at the hands of scientists and other human beings.
In a Rosicrucian Fellowship Magazine dated 1954, it was stated that we had no need to feel “superior” to the animals, for each human of the present period of Earth-manifestation was at one time in the “animals status,” while each animal now is potentially a human, so the difference between us is simply one of evolutionary timing.
Many animals are psychic, for at times they seem able to see things and people that we cannot see, and they can also sense danger. There are many instances where humans have been rescued from house fires through being warned by their pets, and I have a true, heart-warming account of a sheepdog that rescued several hundred sheep from a blazing barn.
If we have loved a pet sincerely and deeply, we are sometimes able to see its spirit after its so-called death, for the link of love is never broken. Many books have been written about the life after death, and it is comforting to know that our animal or bird friends are there to greet us when we ourselves pass from the terrestrial to the spiritual planes of existence.
My contributor Mrs. Clara Clayton said that a group spirit knows when any help is given by humans to its own particular group, and it is also very much aware of human cruelty towards its charges. Max Heindel went further than this and said that the group spirit suffers when any members of its group are hurt.
Animals are sent to Earth in physical forms, just as we are, in order to gain experience that will help them to evolve, and since the same divine life animates us all, we have no right to hinder their evolution by killing, ill-treating, or mutilating them, any more than we have the right to kill and ill-treat each other.
White Eagle, the North American Indian who inspired the founding of the White Eagle Lodge and its teachings, said that no good can ever come to mankind from cruel experiments with animals because it is against divine law.
Sathya Sai Baba, the cosmic avatar of Prasanthi Nilayam, India, declared that there is neither need nor justification for vivisection, and that the solution of every physical problem and the ultimate explanation of every material phenomenon can only be discovered by research into super-physical worlds.
The following is a Teaching Angel’s message to Geoffrey Hodson, who was able to tune in to the angel’s higher vibrations: “Why is the intellect, which is so keen when concentrated on material things, so blind to the eternal truths of life? Disease has been with you through countless ages, and is even now a growing menace to your lives; with all your knowledge and your intellect you cannot see wherein the causes lie. You torture animals, you make your horrid antidotes, you saturate your bodies with poisons and with drugs until the temple of the living God, which is your Self, is no more worthy of its Hierophant… When war, oppression, exploitation, cruelty, and selfishness cease upon earth, disease will disappear within one generation, and not before. Cease, then, the nameless horrors of the research department of your hospitals; emancipate yourselves from the ghastly superstition that by causing pain to others you may keep it from yourselves…”
Cruelty of any kind to birds and animals is abhorrent, and this includes fac
tory farming, which is against the laws of Nature, and should be entirely abandoned in time to avert the dire consequences that we humans are bringing upon ourselves.
“None, not the tiniest insect, the smallest plant, the most insect mineral, is outside of the life of the Creator,” said an un-named writer in the before-mentioned Rosicrucian Fellowship Magazine. That is why the group spirits, whose great work for the inhabitants of the other kingdoms of Nature is unceasing, deserve more of our compassion, understanding, and cooperation, for to them all the different forms of the One Life are sacred.
Epilogue
I am ending this book with an extract from a letter sent years ago by my contributor Mrs. Emma S. King, who has passed from the Earth plane: “It is so wonderful—the blending and uniting of all life and matter, and the permeating knowledge of the Oneness of the Basic Substance, which the Creator has created within His System—the ultimate atoms of which make the forms for all the various streams of beings both human and non-humans. All is one ascending tide of life, through diverse forms, streaming and returning by succession and experience to whence it came, carrying its harvest with it.”
Seeing Fairies Page 43
