In response to your questions.. I'll do my best to answer.

I would not say that man is the "main player".

The idea of reincarnation is as follows: We are not the body- not the human
body, and not the animal body. When my body dies, I will leave it behind
and either take on a new body (or if I succeed in resetablishing my
relationship with God I may not reincarnate). The body I take on, if I've
lived as an animal while in the human body, taht is, if I live simply to
eat, sleep, and have sex (only live to fulfil sense gratification) then I
will reincarnate into an animal body. I will not "become a duck" or a rat
or a bird or anything else. I'll just be trapped in taht body due to the
karma that I've created.

So, man (or woman or humankind) is not the "main player" in the larger
sense. We are all children of God.

The point is that we are not bodies, but spirit-souls and we are eternal.
Not only are we eternal, but in our natural state we are also blissful and
full of joy. It's only natural that we all look for happiness. It's our
original and natural conidtion. This is true even of those souls trapped in
the animal body (and those trapped in animal consciousness while in the
human body!). We are made from the same stuff and we are all equally God's
children.

We were all once loving servants of God, who realized our postion to Him.
We understood that happiness was a direct result of loving and serving Him.
Somehow, we have lost that connection and have decided that we wanted to try
to be the enjoyers and to become our own masters. We are like the
rebellious teenager and we think we know best for ourselves and so we decide
not to serve God.

We all try to become our own masters and everyone one of us has a different
idea of will make us happy (materially). If I ask you "what would you
really like to do with your life?" or "where do you want to be in 5 years?",
then you will have a different answer than the next person I ask. We all
have different ideas because we are individuals with different tastes.

Some people will live their lives as great hunters, some want only to live
by the beach, some want to use their intellect to gain materially, some love
the water. God gives us these animal bodies, I think, so that we can
completely forget about Him. In the human condition, we are constantly
reminded that there is a God, or we are constantly reminded that there isn't
a God (although there is!)- either way, we hear about God. This does not
happen to animals. No one reminds them of their true nature and even if
someone did they could not understand. They live entirely for their senses.

There is a very important point. That is that this life is suffering.
Being born (being away from God) is the cause of suffering. The further you
get, the more suffering there will be because there is less understanding.
But we must also remember that this is a CHOICE made by the individual
spirit soul to be away from God. If a child screams and yells and throws a
fit because it wants to touch the candle flame what can you do to persuade
it? If the child is persistant enoughm, there is nothing you can do except
let him figure it out for himself. So, God lets us incarnate into the body
which we think will give us the most pleasure. If all you want to do is eat
and have sex all day then why not be a pig?

So, this suffering that happens when one spirit soul decides to eat the
flesh of another is due to ignorance on both sides. These are choices that
we have made through past actions. God knows that they self, the spirit
soul is indestrucible. It cannot be killed or even effected in the
slightest by material suffering. He knows that our "death" does not harm
the real self.

I know that my thoughts are rather jumbled, but I hope that I've been able
to communicate what I intended to communicate. Please ask me to clarify
something if I haven't been clear.

Thank you.

I've tried my best not to insert my personal opinions here, but to only say
what I've been taught. If I've added anything of my own personal opinion,
it was unintentional. I intend to only give the information which has been
taught to me by my teachers.





> wrote in message
oups.com...
> That was a good answer Anon - but why would God make a world where
> animals suffer because of mankind's free will? How is that fair? Why
> would an intelligent being make a world where one species eats another?
> I suspect your answer will be that man is the "main player" in this
> world and it's just tough luck for the others. I hope I am wrong.
>