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QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 335
QUESTION No. 168.
Do animals live after death?
Answer: That which lives is the spirit, which has neither
beginning nor end, IT is. But what you mean is, most likely,
does it persist in the shape of an animal? To that question
we may say yes, it persists for a longer or a shorter
time, according to the stage of its evolution,
in a desire
body made of the material of the Desire World. Even the
beetle that crawls over the sidewalk and i? stepped upon
may be seen by the clairvoyant to walk a few feet away
and then gradually fade to nothingness. It persists only
for a few moments in its shape before the spirit returns
to the central source of the group spirit. In the case of
a horse, a cow, or any of the higher animals, there is a
correspondingly longer time and more consciousness in the
Desire World than in the case of these lower forms. As
an illustration we may mention a case which attracted con-
siderable attention a few years ago when Eider Haggard,
the English novelist, published a remarkable dream. He
had a dog to whom he was very much attached, and one
night he dreamed that the dog came to him showing signs
of embarrassment and distress, beckoning him to come
along. Eider Haggard in his dream followed the dog
which led the way some distance to a brook. There among
some bulrushes, it showed Eider Haggard itself lying dead,
for an
looking up at him in mute and piteous appeal
explanation.
When Eider Haggard woke the following morning, he
remembered the dream most vividly, but took no notice of
it until later in the day when it was discovered that the