Do animals have souls – if yes, then how are humans different from animals?
Great.
Do animals have souls? If yes, then how are they different from us humans? Answer, the presence or absence of the soul can be inferred by the presence or absence of its symptom which is consciousness. Consciousness is the capacity to experience things and to experience matter. We experience things as something, some food as delicious, some food as bitter, something as warm, something as cold.
This capacity to experience matter cannot come from matter because matter does not have the capacity to experience itself. So that capacity to experience matter comes from something non-material which in philosophical circles is called as the soul. So now we human beings have consciousness and we can observe that even animals have consciousness.
If a dog is threatened, a dog either barks or dog runs away. If an animal is given some good food to eat, it expresses pleasure. So animals, it's quite clear, have consciousness and because consciousness is the symptom of the soul, so we can infer that animals do have souls.
And now what is the difference if we all have souls? The difference is in the evolution of the soul. The soul's consciousness is under-evolved in animals and is more evolved in humans. The soul is presently covered by the body and the magnitude of the covering varies in different species.
So the soul is described in the Bhagavad Gita to be Sat, Chit, Ananda. Sat means eternity, Chit means consciousness or awareness, cognizance and Ananda is happiness. So because we are at our core souls, that is why we want to live forever, we want to learn more and more things and we seek happiness.
And these three drives, the drive to live and live on and on, the drive to seek knowledge, the drive to be happy, these are seen in humans as well as in animals. At the same time, these longings, these characteristics of existence, knowledge and happiness, they are much more developed in humans. So that's why when we want to live, we don't just live in natural habitat, we create big comfortable houses for ourselves.
When we want to learn, we just don't look around and learn, we write huge books and we develop technological mechanisms for learning. And when we want happiness, we create elaborate arrangements for happiness. So in this way, in human beings, the Satchitananda faculty of the soul is expressed much more.
And through this itself, we human beings have developed art, literature, language, technology, science and all these are the higher expressions of our higher consciousness. Albert Einstein stated that the arts, the religions and the sciences are all branches of the same tree of human knowledge. So our higher capacity for inquiry when we direct it towards the highest reality, then it brings us the highest fulfillment.
So we human beings alone can ask, why do I exist? What is the purpose of my life? When we inquire about this, then that capacity to inquire about not just how I exist, that means how do I eat, how do I defend myself, how do I reproduce, the how questions the animals also ask. But we humans alone can ask the why questions. Why do I exist? What is the purpose of my life? Why am I living in this world? That capacity for metaphysical inquiry is what differentiates humans from animals.
Bereft of this metaphysical inquiry, all living beings engage in four activities. Aahaar and Nidra by Maitreya Namaskar. Eating, sleeping, mating and defending.
We human beings do it, animals also do it. But we human beings can do more than this and to the extent we pursue the higher capacity for inquiry and inquire about the purpose of life, to that extent we develop spiritually and when we develop spiritually our soul evolves further and we realize our potential for lasting, everlasting happiness. The soul is eternally connected with God and through spiritual inquiry and spiritual growth, when our connection with God becomes steady and loving, then we experience everlasting happiness.
So, the capacity for inquiring about life's higher dimension and the capacity, the potential to achieve everlasting happiness. This is what differentiates humans from animals. Thank you.