Theos-Talk Archives (August 2004 Message tt00083)

Aug 5 2004

Re: Vegetarianism & Religions !

Dear Gerry:


Your questions are of course valuable.

If humans could live without killing plants, vegetables and animals it would
be better for all.

In fact, a recommended diet for such who may desire to live in that way
would (in moderation) include the non-destructive vegetable foods: fruits,
nuts, sap, milk, renewable portions of plants, water, etc...

It is to be understood that the animal kingdom represents levels of
intelligence that are already in terms of individualization, in advance of
the kind of experience the vegetable kingdom offers.  

As I understand it: The fragments of the ONE CONSCIOUSNESS, as "MONADS" or
"individual eternal Pilgrims," wend their way ever upward toward an
eventual universalism -- a perfection of knowledge, and, along with that,
the responsibility and privilege, or, the right to act entirely under the
Laws of Free-will accorded by NATURE to those of her most trusted
"servants." I mean those who can and will not harm anything on "its upward
way." A title the Masters used for Themselves. [I find evidence for this in
the pages of the SECRET DOCTRINE -- relating to both cosmogenesis and
anthropogenesis.]

Have a look at some of the teachings Theosophy advances -- see below.

Best wishes,

Dallas

--------------------------------------------------------

ON VEGITARIANISM


DIET and its Effect on Man's Body.

============================


Some Theosophical quotations on food and diet:

Available on line from blavatsky.net 


VEGETARIANISM
1

H P B -- The KEY TO THEOSOPHY p. 260-2, Results of diet

---------------------------------------------

ENQUIRER. I understand now your general idea; but let us see how you apply
it in practice. How about vegetarianism, for instance? 
 
THEOSOPHIST. One of the great German scientists has shown that every kind of
animal tissue, however you may cook it, still retains certain marked
characteristics of the animal which it belonged to, which characteristics
can be recognised. And apart from that, every one knows by the taste what
meat he is eating. We go a step farther, and prove that when the flesh of
animals is assimilated by man as food, it imparts to him, physiologically,
some of the characteristics of the animal it came from. Moreover, occult
science teaches and proves this to its students by ocular demonstration,
showing also that this "coarsening" or "animalizing" effect on man is
greatest from the flesh of the larger animals, less for birds, still less
for fish and other cold-blooded animals, and least of all when he eats only
vegetables. 
 
ENQUIRER. Then he had better not eat at all?
 
THEOSOPHIST. If he could live without eating, of course it would. But as
the matter stands, he must eat to live, and so we advise really earnest
students to eat such food as will least clog and weight their brains and
bodies, and will have the smallest effect in hampering and retarding the
development of their intuition, their inner faculties and powers. 
 
ENQUIRER. Then you do not adopt all the arguments which vegetarians in
general are in the habit of using? 
 
THEOSOPHIST. Certainly not. Some of their arguments are very weak, and
often based on assumptions which are quite false. But, on the other hand,
many of the things they say are quite true. For instance, we believe that
much disease, and especially the great predisposition to disease which is
becoming so marked a feature in our time, is very largely due to the eating
of meat, and especially of tinned meats. But it would take too long to go
thoroughly into this question of vegetarianism on its merits; so please pass
on to something else. 
 
ENQUIRER. One question more. What are your members of the Inner Section to
do with regard to their food when they are ill? 
 
THEOSOPHIST. Follow the best practical advice they can get, of course.
Don't you grasp yet that we never impose any hard-and-fast obligations in
this respect? Remember once for all that in all such questions we take a
rational, and never a fanatical, view of things. If from illness or long
habit a man cannot go without meat, why, by all means let him eat it. It is
no crime; it will only retard his progress a little; for after all is said
and done, the purely bodily actions and functions are of far less importance
than what a man thinks and feels, what desires he encourages in his mind,
and allows to take root and grow there. 
 
ENQUIRER. Then with regard to the use of wine and spirits, I suppose you do
not advise people to drink them? 
 
THEOSOPHIST. They are worse for his moral and spiritual growth than meat,
for alcohol in all its forms has a direct, marked, and very deleterious
influence on man's psychic condition. Wine and spirit drinking is only less
destructive to the development of the inner powers, than the habitual use of
hashish, opium, and similar drugs. 


--------------------------------------------


2

Crosbie -- FRIENDLY PHILOSOPHER p. 145-6, 196, 

--------------------------------------------

"One of the Teachers wrote, "Chelaship does not Consist in any kind of
eating or drinking, in any practices, observances, forms, or rituals; it is
an attitude of mind." 

Another Teacher said, "Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven and all the rest
shall be added unto you." 

The reason for this is that it is the mind which is involved. If we resort
to practices, then the mind is bent upon them, becomes more and more
implicated in them, and as they are concrete things, the mind becomes of
that complexion. 

Jesus said, "Be ye not as the Pharisees who make clean the outside of the
platter." 

The inner nature has a diet out of our thoughts and motives. If those are
low or gross or selfish, it is equivalent to feeding that nature upon gross
food. 

True Theosophic diet is therefore of unselfish thoughts and deeds, untiring
devotion to the welfare of Humanity, absolute negation of self, unutterable
aspiration to the Supreme Soul. This only is what "we can grow upon, and
vain are the hopes of those who pin their faith on any other doctrines."

As to bodily food. It is that which best agrees with you, taken in
moderation, neither too much nor too little. If your Constitution and
temperament will permit vegetarianism, then that will give less heat to the
blood. "If from illness or long habit a man cannot go without meat, why, by
all means let him eat it. It is no crime; it will only retard his progress a
little; for after all is said and done, the purely bodily functions are of
far less importance than what a man thinks and feels, what desires he
encourages in his mind and allows to take root and grow there." (H. P. B.)

I am saying so much on this subject because experience has shown that it is
so easy for students to slip into bodily observances and stay there; this is
the wrong end to begin on. 

It is best not to make any particular selection as to diet; take what best
agrees with you and sustains your body best. There is nothing in vegetarian
diet to create spirituality. 

The Hindus [in general] who have been vegetarians for centuries are, for the
most part, degraded, and the better portion have as much difficulty as the
western man in the acquirement of spiritual knowledge. 

Also, cows and sheep would be spiritual if such food had that kind of
effect. It is the motive that counts, too, in anything. If a person stops
eating meat in order that he may, by complying with that condition, attain
to a development he has set before him, he misses the mark and has acquired
a selfish motive for the line thus adopted. 

Also, of course, you should know that it has proved to be a real danger for
western peoples, whose digestive organs have become habituated to a meat
diet, to change to a vegetarian one. 

The trouble does not arise from weakness following lack of meat, but from
imperfect digestion causing disease-due to the retention in the stomach of
vegetable matter for so long a time that yeasts and other growths, including
alcoholic fermentations, arc thrown into the circulation, sufficiently to
bring on nervous diseases, tuberculosis, and manifold other derangements. It
is well known that a man who has melancholia due to systemia cannot expect
to reach a high development in occultism.

The first thing, then, is to have the right kind of thoughts; the other, and
by far the least important, is diet, in which the main thing to be observed
is, eat whatever will keep the body in the best working condition, so that
it may be as effective an instrument for work in the world as possible. 

It is quite true that the foods of the present time are not ideal. In the
future better products will be had, but they will come from right thinking;
our present work is to think from a right basis and become established in
that basis, and assist others to do likewise. From this will flow what is in
accord with it, from within, outward-a natural growth."	FRIENDLY PHILOSOPHER
p 145


" It is never so much a question of what a person does as 'Why does he do
it?" If for self-benefit, it is just as reprehensible as any other selfish
procedure. It is motive and motive alone that makes an action good or bad,
black or white. After all is said and done, "the purely bodily functions are
of far less importance than what a man thinks and feels, what desires he
encourages in his mind, and allows to. take root, and grow there." "True
chelaship is not a matter of diet, postures or practices of any kind; it is
an attitude of mind." F P 196


------------------------------------------


Judge - THEOSOPHIC DIET -- W Q J Articles, II p. 447, 452, 

Judge - ABOUT KILLING ANIMALS -- W Q J Articles II p. 545-6,


------------------------------------------------------------------
Judge -- FORUM ANSWERS -- Pp. 129-30, 

--------

Q.:	What is the opinion of the leaders of the T. S. in regard to
vegetarianism?

W.Q.J.-Physicians and those who have tried vegetarianism are those who
should speak on this. The opinions of "leaders," as such, are of no
consequence. 

I tried it for nine years, and found it injurious. This is because the
western man has no heredity of vegetarianism behind him, and also because
his dishes as a vegetarian are poor. 

They should be confined to rice, barley, wheat, oats, some nuts and a little
fruit; but westerners don't like such a meager variety. The stomach does not
digest vegetables, it is for meat; the teeth are for tearing and grinding
meat. Most of those vegetarians I know eat a whole lot of things injurious
to them and are not benefited. 

Had we an ancestry going back thousands of years, vegetarians always, the
case might be different. I know that most of the experienced physicians we
have in the Society- and I know a great many- agree with my view, and some
of them insist that vegetarianism is wrong under any conditions. 

With the latter view I do not agree. There ought to come a time in our
evolution when new methods of food production will be known, and when the
necessity for killing any highly organized creature will have disappeared.

The other branch of the subject is that regarding spiritual development and
vegetarianism. It has been so often dealt with it is sufficient to say that
such development has nothing to do with either meat-eating or the diet of
vegetables. 

He who gives up meat-eating but does not alter his nature and thoughts,
thinking to gain in spirituality, may flatter himself and perhaps make a
fetish of his denial, but will certainly thereby make no spiritual
progress."
FORUM ANSWERS - Judge 129-30


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Crosbie -- ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS -- Ocean Class -- 
Pp. 199, 208,, 215,

H P B Articles -- Vol. III 167, 175fn, 176; 195, Vol. II 38, 95,

MAHATMA LETTERS Pp. 65, 276, 400, 406,

H P B -- "THE DEMON OF DRINK" (story)  
THEOSOPHICAL MOVEMENT IX 93, 136,
"THE FIRST DISTILLER"

ISIS UNVEILED I xx, 277fn [alcohol & animal magnetism, change of
polarity]

Judge -- GITA NOTES, p. 90, 223 "Right food" defined  

"Neo-Platonists recommended vegetarianism to facilitate the purification of
the personality"	THEOSOPHICAL GLOSSARY Pp. 149, 257-8

Beginnings of vegetation on earth	S D II 713fn

The Bean of Pythagoras	PATH II 278, 340

"There never yet was a conquering nation of vegetarians"  
FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY, p.. 10

Drunken sleep/stupor described	TRANSACTIONS, p. 78

==============================
DTB





===============================

-----Original Message-----
From: Gerald 
Sent: Tuesday, June 04, 2002 11:33 AM
To: 
Subject: RE: Vegetarianism & Religions !

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

We keep many species alive for the sole purpose of eating them. Otherwise
they would have died out. So. which is best?


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

"Improvement" is very subjective but if bodies are improved, all the more
reason to eat them.


<<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.>>

If so, then how can eating vegetables and plants be condoned?


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

Agreed.

So, why do living beings have to eat other living beings in order to
survive?

Jerry S.