The spiritual significance of keeping pets

                There was a  search term    " Asaramji on keeping pets"    in my blog stats a few days earlier. I really don't have any information about what Asaramji Bapu   said but this reminded me of a paper I read which was  published by the Theosophical society.

         The gist was something like this:

'After the death of any animal its soul merges into a "Group soul". A human soul however is more complex and is highly individualistic. (There are many variations to this concept and some believe that the group soul of the animal is not so rudimentary and also that a human soul  goes into some kind of a complex matrix which resembles a group soul).

  So when a man has a pet  say a dog for instance and  he cares and loves it and treats it like a friend,the dog becomes highly ' individualised ' and it would not like to merge into the group soul  where it  truly belongs  after its death.This may hinder its natural evolution .This close association with a human makes it want to be independent  .So it is always recommended that the person must treat animals with the love and respect they deserve but  he should not be responsible for hampering its evolutionary progress.'