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Are Animals a Part of “Everyone”?

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BY TIM BOTTA

Every day, a horror story about cruelty to animals trends on social media. While too many still respond to such stories by stating, “It’s just an animal,” more and more people are demonstrating a growing awareness of human treatment of animals.

SCM cat
Photo by Randy Southerland

The universal perspective of New Thought in the progressive era was ahead of its time and included early feminists, and advocates for racial equality. Does New Thought’s universal inclusiveness embrace animals? In “a world that works for everyone,” can “everyone” include not just all of humanity but the animals? I believe that the positive-thinking movement provides inspiration and grounding for a greater development of consciousness regarding animal welfare.

The history of the New Thought movement includes a profound concern for animal welfare. New Thought’s early social justice advocates included “animal-rights activists,” according to Mitch Horowitz’s book “One Simple Idea,” a history of the New Thought movement. Horowitz notes that James Allen, author of “As a Man Thinketh,” was an animal rights activist. Many other New Thought pioneers, such as Prentice Mulford (1834-1891), Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919), and Ralph Waldo Trine (1866-1958), deeply cared about animal welfare.

In his essay “Museum and Menagerie Horrors,” Prentice Mulford asks his readers to consider what humans and animals share:

“Will you not, if in its freedom you study [an animal’s] real habits and see its real and natural life, feel more and more drawn to it by the tie of a common sympathy, as you see evidenced in that life so much that belongs to your own? Like you, it builds a home; like you, it has affection and care for its mate; like you, it provides for its family; like you, it is alarmed at the approach of danger; like you, it nestles in the thought of security.”

New Thought poet Ella Wheeler Wilcox, in her poem “Voice of the Voiceless,” speaks of the spiritual commonality of humans and animals:

The same Force formed the sparrow

That fashioned man, the king;

The God of the Whole gave a spark of soul

To furred and to feathered thing.

Ralph Waldo Trine (most famous for his book “In Tune with the Inifinite”) in his wide-ranging work “Every Living Creature,” shares with Mulford the conviction that humanity should recognize the emotional similarities between humans and animals:

We must learn to sympathize with the animals about us. We must realize that they love life just as we love it, that they suffer just as we suffer, that they are hurt by harshness and threats as we are hurt by them, that they are influenced by our thoughts as we are influenced by the thoughts of one another, that they love kindly treatment and that they appreciate it as we do ourselves, that they love and form attachments just as we do.

Important contemporary figures in the New Thought movement have taken these pioneering extensions of consciousness and sympathy in an ever-more universal direction. In a recent article on this blog, the late Rev. Dr. Nirvana Gayle, described by Harv Bishop as “one of New Thought’s greatest prophetic voices,” states his vision of an all-inclusive consciousness:

So what I am working on myself is that I am not an individualized self that is some fashion, form or shape separate from the rest of the world, separate from other people, separate from other nationalities, separate from other races, separate from other classes, separate from other species, separate from other animals, separate from the air or the sky or the wind. No! All of this is me. That has been the expansion  and explosion of my own conscious awareness to the point where all of it is me.

calypso
Calypso by Tim Botta

A consciousness that expands to include that which is outside the individual ego will include all human beings as well as animals. Strong historical roots in the positive-thinking movement point to an ongoing concern in New Thought with the welfare of animals. Care for animals develops from the universal consciousness of New Thought.

The New Thought movement laudably pioneered inclusiveness of all human beings. From the beginning, the movement also pioneered an awareness of the treatment of animals. I believe that the New Thought movement, with its tradition of universal consciousness and positive action, is continuing to lead the way in humanity’s development of a greater consciousness of our relationship to other species.

In the near future, when we envision our goal of “a world that works for everyone,” we will naturally see animals as part of that world.

 

 

Tim Botta animal portraits
Illustrations by Tim Botta

Tim Botta photo

Tim Botta is a North Carolina artist, writer and educator with a passion for New Thought. To see his animal and New Thought inspired artwork visit his Fine Art America site.

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4 Comments

  1. Great article, Harv. We live in an odd world in which people treat pets like members of the family, but tolerate factory farming of other animals for food — or as the subjects of cruel testing to ensure product safety for cosmetics. I do think the idea that we are all manifestations of the same source – and connected to that source – -has helped advance our thinking about the humane treatment of animals. It opens a way to at least seeing that mistreatment of animals — like the mistreatment of humans — harms us as well. We have to some extent been able to move beyond the idea that having dominion over the earth doesn’t just mean using up resources till everything is gone.

    I also love the use of my photo of the cat and Science of Mind. Oddly enough that is the only book she lays on. Clearly she has good taste.

    1. Good points Randy. I do agree we tend to favor some animals and use others. And I have always been struck how animation lionizes cute mice which can be a health threat, and demonizes cats.
      People literally demonized cats in the middle ages and treated them horribly as a sign of the Devil while those that cared for cats fared better in the plague years.
      And the picture could not have been more synchronistic for Tim’s essay this week! My personal copy of ScM is that very edition with the yellow cover. She does have good taste!

    2. Hi, Randy. I appreciate your response (and I love the photo of your cat, too!). I think that people have tended to put animals in a completely separate category from humans and have tried in this way to rationalize the abuse of animals. I agree with you that thinking of our common connection to the source can be the basis for greater awareness of how we treat animals.

  2. Wonderful article. I have always shared the whole and inclusive consciousness of all Life. That One power that is filled with probability and possibility expressed in all Life from animals to trees and flowers and all that is.

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