[Advaita-l] Animals can get Jnana?

[kuntimaddi sadananda]

Shreeman - PraNAms

Animals only exhaust vaasanaas and unlike human beings do not accumulate new ones. A tiger when it kills its pray, it does not incur sin and cow when its grass does not gain punyma etither. They follows their instincts which are nothing but pre-programed path dictated by their praarabda karma. 

Sin comes when there is divergence between intellectual values and emotional compromise. The greater their divergence greater is the sin. Hence a man of discrimination when he compromises his values his fall will be steeper. Hence Upanishad warns the seeker and says it is a razor-edge path.
 
Taking the animal life as Shree Subbuji pointed out is taking a detour to exhaust some vaasanaas that can be exhausted only in animal life-form. After exhausting (without accumulating new ones in that life form) one come back to human life form where there is discriminative intellect to help develop viveka needed for self-realization. 

The story of jadabharata in Upanishad illustrates this beautifully.

Hari Om!
Sadananda

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On Fri, 4/18/14, Parthiban K.K. <parthiban.kk at gmail.com> wrote:

 If animals which do not have discriminating intellect are to be considered lower and incapable of spiritual realization, for that matter even spiritual growth, what is their future? Will they always remain the same in future births also or they will further deteriorate as they will hunt and kill other beings to satiate their hunger in this birth as animals? What will be their future? Please elucidate?