III. The Relation of the Human Being to Nature

When looking at an animal with the eyes of a theosophist, these feelings must arise: You will find in every human being an Ego—in every single human being. In an animal you cannot find an Ego on the physical plane. For this you must climb up to the astral plane, which is populated by animal group-Egos. The lion-Ego on the astral plane is an entirely different being than a single lion, just like your fingers appear to be a different ‘being’ from yourself. There are animal group-Egos, which are far more intelligent than the smartest human beings on the physical plane. These group-Egos are the drivers, catalysers and arrangers of what an animal experiences here on the physical plane. Never will anyone come to a true understanding of animal life, who doesn’t know that what the animals do here is only an expression of the measures that have been taken by the animal group-Egos. Look at the strange phenomenon that in a particular season, the bird life of the Northeast begins to migrate Southwest in one line, to return again in spring. Each bird species flies at a particular height and you can imagine that these bird migrations are connected to important instincts in the animal world. The spring migration is a wedding flight. If you enquire about the underlying wise arrangements of this, you will not understand these without making it clear to yourself that these are made by the group-Egos who conduct and direct everything. All that happens in the animal world will appear different to us, once we are aware of the presence of group-Egos. Imagine you had a wall with different holes in it through which someone would put his hands. What a mistake would one make if one would believe these hands are beings themselves. Someone who believes that an animal is a being by itself makes such a mistake. Those who conduct the bird migration are wise beings. In this way the animal world becomes an expression of a world of wise beings standing behind it. We learn to know a wonderful world of beings and no longer pass thoughtlessly over what we encounter directly. In fact, those animal group-Egos are always present in the periphery of our Earth. They are spiritually constantly encircling our Earth, just like the trade winds or the migrating birds or the electrical and magnetic currents that flow around the Earth. In this way spiritual currents and movements exist that do not represent anything but those deeds of the animal group-Egos.