During the course of esoteric development, the response of the
physical and superphysical bodies to certain foods changes. These
responses themselves, without some abstract reason as motive or
justification, can cause individuals to modify their diet, eliminating
certain articles and emphasizing others. These dietary changes
are often brought about by the very effects of serious esoteric
study, because it actually begins to transform the human sheaths.
The dense physical body becomes more mobile and inwardly active.
The individual organs become more independent of one another,
especially the heart, spinal cord and brain.
This slight increase in organ autonomy creates an unstable equilibrium
which may be attributed to an indisposition or illness, whereas
it is but the consciousness of this enhanced mobility or independence
of organs which formerly were not felt at all (being part of the
sympathetic or involuntary nervous system), except when they were
functioning abnormally.
The relation of humans to their food is only properly understood
when we consider the relationship of humans to the other kingdoms
of nature. Plants as a kingdom of life "work up" mineral
substances into a higher organization and imbue them with life.
The inorganic becomes organic and is permeated with life ether.
While humans cannot efficiently assimilate minerals in their elemental
form, they are so organized physically that they are in a position
to continue the process of development at the point where the
plant plateaus. We may pluck a leaf or gather an apple, the organs
of a plant, and develop them further within our own organization.
Animals also continue this process of further organizing plant
forms. However, when humans eat flesh food, they leave unused
those forces required to process plant food. Since the well-being
of any organ consists in activating and using all of its forces,
the eating of flesh food is equivalent to a person saying, "I
will do without my right arm. I will bind it up so that it can't
be used." In like manner meat eaters condemn a certain sum
of forces within their organism to inactivity. The unused organizations
lie fallow, are crippled, become hardened, and are carried through
the person's life as a foreign body. However, they remain undetected
as such until the person embarks on esoteric training, whereupon
the increased mobility and independence of the internal organs
discloses this "foreign body" as a further source of
uneasiness.
As a result of this unsettling experience, feeling the presence
of an alien body within one, persons who have begun esoteric training
may simply stop eating meat, not only because the sensibilities
are offended, but also because it blunts a living force in them
and gives the sensation that they are carrying an interior dead
weight.
Additional reasons for the elimination of flesh food have been
fully articulated in the Rosicrucian literature. They include
the following:
(1) Greater demands made on the body to process the more highly
organized animal structures, requiring more etheric and biochemical
energy for digestion.
(2) Shorter retention of the life force and nutrients due to the
more rapid disintegration of the animal product, resulting in
the need for more frequent and/or larger meals.
(3) Unhealthy, even poisonous and carcinogenic substances are
introduced into the body's ecology, produced as byproducts of
animal metabolism (catabolites) and as wastes carried in animal
blood and retained in tissue fluids.
(4) The existence of the subtler but no less affecting residue
of the animal's desire body in the form of: (a) noxious chemicals
generated by the animal's unnatural treatment while living and
by an apprehension of its forced death; (b) the tendency to feel
and act in a more "animal" manner, dulling the finer
human sentiments and stimulating a martial, violent, even cruel
nature. Or, expressed more esoterically: Flesh foods stimulate
the instinctive life of the will, which is primarily active in
the emotions and passions.
(5) Considerations of economy and practicality. The vegetarian
diet is less expensive. Plant food is universally more available
and renewable, has a far longer "shelf life" than flesh
foods, and is far less likely to be a source of contamination
and disease.
(6) The overproteinizing of the Western diet and the companion
myth of the protein-deficient vegetarian diet.
(7) The compelling argument of land conservation, which states
that a given area of crops cultivated for direct human consumption
must be increased seventeenfold to feed animals that will provide
an equivalent food value.
(8) The mounting debt of destiny devolving on humanity as a life
wave will require balancing the books at some later time to redress
the many forms of animal abuse and offset the massive dependence
on the animal life wave as a primary food source.
In the final analysis, it may well be the most personal, and indeed
selfish, consideration which causes many humans to stop using
flesh foods in their diet. At first, we might take it on hearsay
that animal meat militates against esoteric development. Accordingly,
if reluctantly, we make the "sacrifice." But once having
ceased from this now atavistic habit, we will find that in every
way we and all life forms are the beneficiaries. We discover also
that the vehement resistance to the discontinuance of meat eating
among the general population is based on the fear of losing certain
valued basic instincts (shades of a recent movie by this title?),
aggressive passions, and emotions. Men, if not women, it is erroneously
said, will become less "manly" and strong, less able
to cope in a threatening world.
When the reality and blessings of the spiritual life shall be
more generally acknowledged, humanity will realize that what is
lost in the grosser instincts, blood lusts, and selfish inclinations
will be immeasurably offset by enhancements of the inner life
of the soul, and by the peace and freedom gained from living less
adversarially and more in harmony with our total planetary environment.
— C.W.
— Rays from the Rose Cross Magazine, November/December, 1995
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