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Title details for The Divine Life of Animals by Ptolemy Tompkins - Available

The Divine Life of Animals

One Man's Quest to Discover Whether the Souls of Animals Live On

by Ptolemy Tompkins
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A journey through 20,000 years of history and myth in search of the answer to a single question: Do animals have souls?
 
Anyone who has ever mourned the loss of a cherished pet has wondered about the animal soul. Do animals survive the death of the body, or are they doomed to disappear completely when they leave this world behind? Both scientists and religious authorities have long scoffed at the idea of animals in heaven. Yet the question endures. In this wise, immensely readable book, Ptolemy Tompkins embarks on a quest for the answer—taking us on a top-speed tour of the history of the animal soul.
 
Equally at home with mainstream and alternative spiritual philosophies, Tompkins takes us from the savannas of Africa to the earth’s first cities to the early days of the great faith traditions of both East and West. Along the way, he shows that, despite what many of us have been taught, the world’s various spiritual traditions all have profoundly meaningful things to say about the animal soul, if we simply know where to look. Rescuing these ancient insights and blending them with vivid stories about animals today—from a dwarf rabbit named Angus to a manatee named Moose to a black bear named Little Bit—The Divine Life of Animals paints a gloriously inclusive picture of the cosmos as a place made up of both matter and spirit, in which animals are every bit as important, spiritually speaking, as the humans with whom they share the world. Though it is startlingly original, The Divine Life of Animals also feels strangely and instantly familiar, for it reveals truths that many of us have held in our hearts already, waiting only for someone to give fresh voice to one of the oldest and most trustworthy intuitions we possess.
 
The Divine Life of Animals offers a compelling and timeless vision of the relationship between humans and animals that will have you looking at the animals in your life with new eyes.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    June 8, 2010

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9780307451347

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9780307451347
      • File size: 2098 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from May 17, 2010
      Guideposts writer Tompkins (The Beaten Path) tackles the puzzling question of animal afterlife in this delightfully insightful and well-researched narrative. As a 12-year-old boy, Tompkins found a scraggly, malnourished dog on the Yucatán peninsula and fed him despite his adult chaperones’ advice against it; for years, he pondered the fate of the affectionate creature. As an adult, Tompkins loses his beloved rabbit Angus yet continues to feel his presence around his home. With this loss, he indulges his curiosities about the animal soul and discovers that people of all faiths and across history have had different insights about the same perplexing questions of the animal spirit world. Tompkins’s book is incredibly entertaining while it also raises deep ethical questions about our human understanding of the animal soul. From animal ghosts and reincarnation to visions, the book uses a panreligious and historical methodology to challenge the reader to disbelieve the divine transcendence of our furry, scaly, and even slimy friends in nature. Compellingly, he makes the cogent argument that the enriching bond between man and beast suggests more than an earthly existence for both.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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