Theos-Talk Archives (August 2004 Message tt00026)

Aug 3 2004

Dear Friend:

QUESTION; Why vegetarianism?

BRIEF ANSWER

1.	As I understand it because it is a benevolence due to the animal
kingdom and the level of intelligence those forms represent.

2.	The whole of Nature (the Universe in toto) exhibits a continual
improvement in the quality of material and other forms used by Intelligence.

3.	It is posited in THEOSOPHY that every Unit of Consciousness -- (The
atom-life, or "monad") -- each is an immortal Pilgrim -- struggling through
an enormous period of time to eventually become a "human THINKER," (this is
the freedom to think and act of itself as a unit) and then (a deva) or
"God" -- a "super-human" (in mind, and in spiritual perception and action)
-- as acquiring (through self-effort) the wisdom of
universal-self-consciousness.

4. Human diet does not need animals as food to maintain itself. 


REFERENCES

1

ABOUT KILLING ANIMALS

A correspondent asks:

Will you kindly explain why, if you think it wrong to kill a water bug, that
you should consider it right to slay larger animals for food?

I do not remember having said it was wrong to kill a water bug: hence there
is no conclusion to be made from that to the question of feeding on animals,
so far as I am concerned.

The questions of right and wrong are somewhat mixed on this subject. If one
says it is morally wrong to kill a water bug, then it follows that it is
wrong to live at all, inasmuch as in the air we breathe and the water
imbibed there are many millions of animals in structure more complicated
than bugs. 

Though these are called infusoria and animalculae, yet they are living,
moving beings as much as are bugs. We draw them in and at once they are
destroyed, slain to the last one. 

Shall we therefore stop living? The whole of life is a battle, a destruction
and a compromise as long as we are on the material plane. As human beings we
have to keep on living, while in our destructive path millions of beings are
hourly put to death. Even by living and earning a living each one of us is
preventing some one else from doing the same, who, if we were dead, might
step into our shoes. But if we abandoned the fight - were we, indeed, able
to so do - then the ends of evolution could not be attained. Hence we have
to stay and endure what Karma falls from the necessary deaths we occasion.

So the true position seems to me to be this, that in certain environments,
at certain stages of evolution, we have to do an amount of injury to others
that we cannot avoid. 

So while we thus live we must eat, some of flesh and others of the
vegetable. Neither class is wholly right or wrong. 

It becomes a wrong when we deliberately without actual need destroy the
lives of animals or insects. So the man who was born in a family and
generation of meat-eaters and eats the meat of slaughtered animals does less
wrong than the woman who, though a vegetarian, wears the feathers of
slaughtered birds in her hats, since it was not necessary to her life that
such decoration should be indulged in. So the epicure who tickles his palate
with many dishes of meats not necessary for sustentation is in the same case
as the woman who wears bird's feathers. 

Again as to shoes, saddles, bridles, pocketbooks, and what not, of leather.
These are all procured from the skins of slain animals. Shall they be
abolished? Are the users of them in the wrong? Any one can answer. Or did we
live near the north pole we would be compelled to live on bears' and wolves'
meat and fat. Man, like all material beings, lives at the expense of some
others. Even our death is brought about by the defeat of one party of
microbes who are devoured by the others, who then themselves turn round and
devour each other.

But the real man is a spirit-mind, not destructible nor destroying; and the
kingdom of heaven is not of meat nor of drink: it cometh not from eating nor
refraining- it cometh of itself. - ED	Path, March, 1892
 
-----------------------------------------------------------


2

SPIRIT - SOUL - BODY-FORM
 
 
"...the "Spirit," or the divine portion of the soul is pre-existent as a
distinct being from all eternity."...Both the human Spirit (or the
Individuality), the re-incarnating Spiritual Ego, and Buddhi, the Spiritual
Soul, are pre-existent. But, while the former exists as a distinct entity,
an individualization, the soul exists as pre-existing breath, an unscient
portion of an intelligent whole. Both were originally formed from the
Eternal Ocean of light, but as the Fire-Philosophers... expressed it, there
is a visible as well as invisible spirit in fire."	Key 105-6
 

NEPHESH - Animal "Soul"
 
"...(animals)...These are no less than man, informed with the same principle
of sentient life, the nephesh of the 2nd chapter of Genesis. The Soul is by
no means the Mind, nor can an idiot, bereft of the latter, be called a
"soul-less" being..."	HPB Articles II 18
 
 
"...(the) animal soul (Nephesh of the Hebrew Kabalist)...the ray which
emanates from the Higher Manas or permanent EGO, and is that "principle"
which forms the human mind--in animals instinct."	Transactions. 59
 
 
"...man has one "principle" more than the tiniest insect, but because man is
a perfected animal, the vehicle of a fully developed monad, self-conscious
and deliberately following its own line of progress, whereas in the insect,
and even the higher animal, the higher triad of principles is absolutely
dormant."	Trans. 14-15
 
"A dog that has to exercise its own sagacity to find food, will sooner
develop psychical powers in that direction, than one that does nothing but
eat and sleep, and the individual or differentiated monad of the former will
sooner reach the condition necessary to enter the human kingdom. The
rudiments of hope, patience, faith, fidelity, confidence, etc., are found in
the animal kingdom."	-- HPB Theosophist 5- p. 223 
 
  
"The difference between animals and men is this: the former are ensouled by
the "principles" potentially, the latter actually."	Key 104


MAN'S FORM IS AN ANIMAL


"Man...in his outward form, simply an animal, hardly more perfect than his
pithecoid-like ancestor of the 3rd Round. He is a living body, not a living
being, since the realization of existence, the "Ego-Sum," necessitates
self-consciousness, and an animal can only have direct consciousness, or
instinct. The soul, whose body vehicle is the Astral, ethereo-substantial
envelope, could die, and man be still living on earth--i.e., the soul could
free itself from and quit the tabernacle for various reasons--such as
insanity, spiritual and physical depravity, etc. Therefore that which
living men (Initiates) can do, the Dhyanis, who have no physical body to
hamper them, can do still better."	
SD I 134-5


MAN'S FORM -- VEHICLE OF A MONAD


"...man is a perfected animal, the vehicle of a fully developed monad,
self-conscious and deliberately following its own line of progress, whereas
in the insect, and even the higher animal, the higher triad of principles is
absolutely dormant."	Trans. 14-15
 
 
LIGHTING UP OF THE MANAS (MIND)
 
"Having passed through all the kingdoms of nature in the previous three
Rounds, his physical frame--one adapted to the thermal conditions of those
early periods--was ready to receive the divine Pilgrim at the first dawn of
human life, i.e., 18,000,000 years ago. It is only at the mid-point of the
3rd Root-Race that man was endowed with Manas. Once united the two and then
the three made one; for though the lower animals, from the amoeba to man,
received their monads, in which all the higher qualities are potential, all
have to remain dormant till each reaches its human form, before which stage
manas (mind) has no development in them. In the animals every principle is
paralyzed, and in a fetus-like state, save the 2nd (vital) and the 3rd (the
astral), and the rudiments of the 4th (Kama, which is desire, instinct)
whose intensity and development varies and changes with the species."	S D
II 254-5
 
 
"Atma-Buddhi [ Monad ] is dual and Manas is triple; inasmuch as the former
has two aspects, and the latter three, i.e., as a principle per se, which
gravitates, in its higher aspect, to Atma-Buddhi, and follows, in its lower
nature, Kama, the seat of terrestrial divisions awakening to intelligence;
and the third and last decidedly animal: i.e., Manas succumbs to the
temptations of Kama." Men are made complete only during their third, toward
the fourth cycle (race). They are made "gods" for good or evil, and
responsible only when the two arcs meet (after 3 1/2 Rounds towards the
fifth Race). They are made so by the Nirmanakaya (spiritual or astral
remains) of the Rudra-Kumaras, "cursed to be reborn on earth again; meaning
doomed in their natural turn to reincarnation in the higher ascending arc of
the terrestrial cycle."	SD II 254-5fn
 

KAMA - CENTER OF THE ANIMAL MAN
 
 
"...(d) Kama rupa -- The seat of animal desires and passions. -- This is
the center of the animal man, where lies the line of demarcation which
separates the mortal man from the immortal entity."	Key 91
 
 
HIGHER AND LOWER MIND DEFINED
 
 
" [ Plato teaches ] ... "when the Soul, psuche, "allies herself to the Nous
(divine spirit or substance), she does everything aright and felicitously;"
but the case is otherwise when she attaches herself to Anoia, (folly, or the
irrational animal Soul). Here, then, we have Manas (or the Soul in general)
in its two aspects: when attaching itself to Anoia (our Kama rupa, or the
"Animal Soul" in "Esoteric Buddhism," runs towards entire annihilation, as
far as the personal Ego is concerned; when allying itself to the Nous
(Atma-Buddhi) it merges into the immortal, imperishable Ego, and then its
spiritual consciousness of the personal that was, becomes immortal."
Key 93
 

ANIMALS REINCARNATE
 
 
[ Animals ] "...they do reincarnate, but that which from them goes forth to
reincarnation is not similar to the reincarnating principle of the human
being. Were we to suppose that the monads now going through the present
animal life were reincarnating in a haphazard way, then surely law
disappears our philosophy tumbles to the ground, and a reign of terror in
the scheme of evolution ensues." WQJ Art II 486
 
 
"In calling the animal "Soulless," it is not depriving the beast, from the
humblest to the highest species, of a "soul." but only of a conscious
surviving Ego-soul, i.e., that principle which survives after a man, and
reincarnates like a man. The animal has an astral body, that survives the
physical body for a short period; but its (animal) Monad does not
reincarnate in the same, but in a higher species, and has no "Devachan" of
course. It has the seeds of all the human principles in itself, but they
are latent."	S D II 196fn
 
 
KARMA OF ANIMALS
 
 
"Animals have Karma, or consequence of act, but they have not man's
responsibility. While they seem to suffer and enjoy, it is all without any
self-consciousness, and hence is less in itself and less lasting in effect.
Their karma is bound up with man; and he is the responsible one and will
have to bear the responsibility, although they feel the burden directly."
WQJ Art II 566  
 
 
"...the effect of Karma upon the animals... the whole of creation waits upon
man and groans that he keeps back the enlightenment of all. What happens
when...you crush out the life of a common croton bug ? Well, it is
destroyed and you forget it. But you brought it to an untimely end, short
though its life would have been. Imagine this being done at hundreds and
thousands of places...Each of these little creatures had life, and energy;
each some degree of intelligence, The sum total of effects of all these
deaths of small things must be appreciable. If not, then our doctrines are
wrong and there is no wrong in putting our the life of a human being ...
[animals] killed for sport..."	WQJ Art I 14-5
	
 
"The brutes unconsciously are aware of the general human opposition, which
in each human being they see focalized."	WQJ Letters 87
 
  
ANIMAL MONADS -- EVOLUTION AND PROGRESS
 
 
"While it is stated that no more animal monads can enter on the man-stage,
it is not said nor inferred that the incoming supply of monads for the
animal kingdom has stopped. They may still be coming in from other "worlds"
for evolution among the animals of this globe...It is quite possible also
that the animal monads may be carried on to other members of the earth-chain
in advance of man for the purpose of necessary development, and this would
lessen the number of their appearances here...the animals, however, being
devoid of developed Manas, have no Devachan and must be forced onwards to
the next planet in the chain...as it gives them a chance for development in
readiness for the time when the monads of that kingdom shall begin to rise
to a new human kingdom. They have lost nothing, but, on the contrary, will
be the gainers."	WQJ Art I 103
 
 
WHAT IS A "MONAD" ?
 
 
"...a Monad [ Atma-Buddhi ] cannot either progress or develop, or even be
affected by the change of states it passes through. It is not on this world
or plane, and may be compared only to an indestructible star of divine light
and fire, thrown down on to our (175fn) Earth as a plank of salvation for
the personalities in which it indwells. It is for the latter to cling to
it; and thus partaking of its divine nature, obtain immortality. Left to
itself the Monad will cling to no one; but, like the "plank," be drifted
away to another incarnation by the unresisting current of evolution...the
evolution of the external form or body round the astral is produced by the
terrestrial forces, just as in the case of the lower kingdoms; but the
evolution of the internal or real MAN is purely spiritual. It is now no
more a passage of the impersonal Monad through many and various forms of
matter--endowed at best with instinct and consciousness on quite a different
plane--as in the case of external evolution, but a journey of the
"pilgrim-soul" through various states of not only matter but self
consciousness and self-perception, or perception from apperception."	S D
I 174-5fn
 
 


MONAD -- A CONCRETE MANIFESTATION OF THE UNIVERSAL
ENERGY AT A PARTICULAR LEVEL OF EVOLUTION
 
 
"...the Monadic, or rather Cosmic, Essence...in the mineral, vegetable and
animal, though the same throughout the series of cycles from the lowest
elemental up to the Deva Kingdom, yet differs in the scale of progression
...the more correct phraseology...would have been to call it "the Monad
manifesting in that form of Prakriti called the Mineral Kingdom." The atom
as represented in the ordinary scientific hypothesis, is not a particle of
something, animated by a psychic something, destined after aeons to blossom
as a man. But it is a concrete manifestation of the Universal Energy which
itself has not yet become individualized; a sequential manifestation of the
one Universal Monas. The ocean (of matter) the life-impulse reaches the
evolutionary stage of man-birth. The tendency towards segregation into
individual Monads is gradual, and is the higher animals comes almost to the
point."	S D I 178
 
 
"...it is our Dhyan-Chohanic essence--the causality of the primal cause
which creates physical man--which is the living, active and potential
matter, pregnant per se with that animal consciousness of a superior kind,
such as is found in the ant or the beaver, which produces the long series of
physiological differentiations...every type in the visible has its prototype
in the invisible Universe..."	S D II 120
 
 
SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE ABYSS 
BETWEEN PSYCHIC AND NOETIC
 
 
"...Self-consciousness belongs alone to man and proceeds from the SELF, the
higher Manas. Only, whereas the psychic element (or Kama-manas) is common
to both the animal and the human being--the far higher degree of its
development in the latter resting merely on the greater perfection and
sensitiveness of his cerebral cells--no physiologist...will ever be able to
solve the mystery of the human mind, in its highest spiritual manifestation,
or in its dual aspect of the psychic and the noetic (or the manasic)...he
would have to admit a lower (animal), and a higher (or divine) mind in man,
or what is known in Occultism as the "personal" and the "impersonal" (10)
Egos. For, between the psychic and the noetic, between the personality and
the individuality, there exists the same abyss as between a "Jack the
Ripper," and a holy Buddha."	HPB Art II 9-10
 
 
"Between man and animal--whose Monads (or Jivas) are fundamentally
identical--there is the impassable abyss of Mentality and
Self-consciousness. What is human mind in it higher aspect, whence comes
it, if it is not a portion of the essence--and, in some rare cases of
incarnation, the very essence--of a higher Being: one from a higher and
divine plane? Can man--a god in the animal form--be the product of Material
Nature by evolution alone. even as is the animal, which differs from man in
external shape, but by no means in the materials of its physical fabric, and
is informed by the same, though undeveloped, Monad--seeing that the
intellectual potentialities of the two differ as the Sun does from the
Glow-worm ? And what is it that creates such a difference, unless man is an
animal plus a living god within his physical shell ?"	S D II 81
 
==============================

I hope this explains that which is asked about,

Best wishes,

Dallas
 
=====================================

-----Original Message-----
From: Raghu K 
Sent: Sunday, August 01, 2004 2:32 AM
To: 
Subject: Vegetarianism & Religions !

Cream StationeryHi

As a brahmin, I am not supposed to harm anyone - so preaches my religion /
Bhagvad Gita. Whenever I feel someone is hurt, I feel guilty. The Buddhists
and Jains go a step further - They tie a cloth around their mouth and sweep
the floor before they walk so that any insect may be wiped out lest they
trample them.

But, take the case of a butcher. His business is killing & selling meat. He
does not feel guilty of the act.

Well, they even say that Jesus had fish with his disciples in his 'last
supper'. Prophet Mohamed opined that goats and chickens were produced by God
for humans to consume happily and killing them after praying God is not
wrong. Some opine that even plants have a life and plucking vegetables will
harm / hurt the plants, as much as killing a goat / hen / fish !!!

Is it not wrong to harm other souls, humans or otherwise ? If yes, why are
religions (Christianity / Islam) not disallowing the same ? In Hinduism,
vegetarianism is advocated not only to keep your system healthy (Vegetarian
foods are easily digestable & you acquire good traits by being vegetarian,
wheras non vegetarian foods kindly rakshas traits in you, so they say), but
also to refrain you from harming other souls. Is there any justification in
killing these creatures for filling up our stomach and feed the taste buds
of our tongue and gullet ? We talk of hundreds of thousands of jews, killed
by Hitler and millions of kurds, killed by Saddam Hussain. Who has the
nerve to talk about these voiceless creatures ? I feel every atma has a
right to live - not just humans ! If someone can kill some atma, in the
name of God, he is as much a saddam / Hitler. I feel Religions are
conveniently biased towards Humans alone.

A sad news is that brahmins in orissa and West Bengal states of India take
eggs and fish, saying that they are vegetarian !!!

If this norm of vegetarianism cannot be implemented strongly by religions,
well, then, all norms of living can be abolished so that people can live a
casual life, free of guilt / shame and inferiority complex. As you know,
inferiority complex is an epidemic (psychological) that spreads to other
persons easily. Atleast people can live with a good self esteem - may be, v
will track back to stone age. But then, that's how it is !!!

Welcome comments / criticisms.

Regards

Raghu