Most people feel that a meal without meat is incomplete, for from time immemorial it has been regarded as an axiom that meat is the most strengthening food we have. All other foodstuffs have been looked upon as mere accessories to the one or more kinds of flesh on the menu. Nothing could be more erroneous ; science has proved by experiments that invariable the nourishment obtained from vegetables has a greater sustaining power, and the reason is easy to see when we look into the matter from the occult side.

The law of assimilation

The law of assimilation is that "no particle of food may be built into the body by the forces whose task that is until it has been overcome by the in-dwelling spirit," because he must be absolute and undisputed ruler in the body, governing the cell lives as an autocrat, or they would each go their own way as they do in decay when the Ego has fled.

It is evident that the dimmer the consciousness of a cell is, the easier it is to overpower it, and the longer it will remain in subjection.

The different kingdoms have different vehicles and consequently a different consciousness.

The mineral has only its dense body and a consciousness like the deepest trance.

It would therefore be easiest to subject foods taken directly from the mineral kingdom. Mineral food would remain with us the longest, obviating the necessity of Eating so often ; but unfortunately we find that the human organism vibrates so rapidly that it is incapable of assimilating the inert mineral directly.

Salt and like substances are passed out of the system at once without having been assimilated at all ; the air is full of nitrogen which we need to repair waste, we breathe it into our system, yet cannot assimilate it or any other mineral till it has first been transmuted in Nature's laboratory and built into the plants.

The plants have a dense and a vital body, which enables them to do this work ; their consciousness is as a deep, dreamless sleep.

Thus it is easy for the Ego to overpower the vegetable cells and keep them in subjection for a long time, hence the great sustaining power of the vegetable.

In animal food the cells have already become more individualized, and as the animal has a desire body giving it a passional nature, it is easily understood that when we eat meat it is harder to overcome these cells which have animal consciousness resembling the dream state, and also that such particles will not stay long in subjection, hence a meat diet requires larger quantities and more frequent meals than the vegetable or fruit diet.

If we should go one step farther and eat the flesh of carnivorous animals, we should find ourselves hungry all the time, for there the cells have become exceedingly individualized and will therefore seek their freedom and gain it so much the quicker.

That this is so, is well illustrated in the case of the wolf, the vulture, and the cannibal, which have become proverbs for hunger, and as the human liver is too small to take care of even the ordinary meat diet, it is evident that if the cannibal lived solely upon human flesh instead of using it as an occasional "tidbit," he would soon succumb, for while too much of the carbohydrates, sugars, starches, and fats do little if any harm to the system, being exhaled through the lungs as carbonic acid gas or passing as water by way of the kidneys and the skin, an excess of meat is also burned up, but leaves poisonous uric acid and it is being more and more recognized that the less meat we eat the better for our well-being.

It is natural that we should desire the very best of food, but every animal body has in it the poisons of decay. The venous blood is filled with carbon dioxide and other noxious products on their way to the kidneys or the pores of the skin to be expelled as urine or perspiration.

These loathsome substances are in every part of the flesh and when we eat such food we are filling our own bodies with toxic poisons.

Much sickness is due to our use of flesh foods.

There is plenty of proof that a carnivorous diet fosters ferocity.

We may mention the well-known fierceness of beasts of prey and the cruelty of the meat-eating American Indian as fair examples.

On the other hand, the prodigious strength and the docile nature of the ox, the elephant, and the horse show the effects of the herb diet on animals, while the vegetarian and peaceable nations of the Orient are a proof of the correctness of the argument against a flesh diet which cannot successfully be gainsaid.

As soon as we adopt the vegetarian diet, we escape one of the most serious menaces of health, namely the putrefaction of particles of flesh imbedded between the teeth, and this is not one of the least arguments why a vegetarian diet should be adopted.

Fruits, cereals, and vegetables are from their very natures SLOW TO DECAY, each particle contains an enormous amount of ether which keeps it alive and sweet for a long time, whereas the ether which interpenetrated the flesh and composed the vital body of an animal, was taken away with the Spirit thereof at the time of death.

Thus the danger from infection through vegetable food is very small in the first place, but many of them so far from being poisonous, are actually antiseptic in a very high degree.

This applies particularly to the citrus fruits : oranges, lemons, grapefruit, etc., not to speak of the king of all antiseptics, the pineapple, which has been used very often with complete success as a cure for the dreaded diphtheria, which is only another name for a septic sore throat. Thus instead of poisoning the digestive tract with putrefactive elements as meats do, FRUITS CLEANSE AND PURIFY THE SYSTEM, and the pineapple is one of the superior to pepsin, and no fiendish cruelty is used to obtain it.

There are twelve salts in the body; they are very vital and represent the twelve signs of the zodiac. These salts are required for the building of the body. They are not mineral salts as generally supposed, but are vegetable.

The mineral has no vital body, and it is only by way of the vital body that assimilation is accomplished ; therefore, we have to obtain these salts through the vegetable kingdom.

Doctors claim to do this, but they are not aware that fire used in the process drives out and destroys the vital body of the plant just as cremation treats our body, and leaves only the mineral parts.

Therefore, if we desire to renew the supply of any salt in our body we must obtain it from the UNCOOKED plant. To the sick this is the way it should be administered.

But we must not jump to the conclusion that everyone should quit eating meat and live on raw plant life.

At our present stage of evolution there are very few who can do so.

We must take care not to raise the vibrations of our bodies too rapidly, for we, to continue our labor among present conditions, must have a body fitted for the work, but let us keep the thought always with us.

There is in the skull at the base of the brain a flame. It burns continually in the medulla oblongata at the head of the spinal cord, and like the fire on the altar of the tabernacle, is of divine origin.

This fire emits a singing sound like the buzz of a bee, which is the keynote of the physical body, and is sounded by the archetype.

It builds in and cements together that mass of cells known as "our body."

The fire burns high or low, clear or dim, according to how we feed it.

There is fire in everything in nature EXCEPT THE MINERAL KINGDOM.

It has no vital body and therefore no avenue for the ingress of the Life Spirit, the fire.

We replenish this sacred fire partly from the FORCES FROM THE SUN entering the vital body through the etheric counterpart of the spleen and from there to the solar plexus where it is colored and then carried upward through the blood.

We also FEED THE FIRE FROM THE LIVING FIRE WE ABSORB FROM THE UNCOOKED FOOD WHICH WE EAT AND THUS ASSIMILATE.

Looking at the matter of flesh-eating from the ethical side also, it is against the higher conception to kill to eat.

In olden times man went out to the chase as any beast of prey, rough and callous ; now he does his hunting in the butcher shop, where none of the nauseating sights of the slaughter house will sicken him.

If each had to go into those blood places where horrors are enacted day after day to be able to satisfy an abnormal injurious habit which causes more sickness and suffering than even liquor craving ; if each had to wield the bloody knife and plunge it into the quivering flesh of his victim, how much meat would we eat ? Very little.

In order to escape doing this nauseating work ourselves on occasion, we force a fellow being to stand in that bloody pen day after day killing thousands of animals every day of the wee ; we brutalize him to such an extent that the law will not allow him to sit on a jury in a capital case because he has ceased to have any regard for life.

The animals which we kill also cry aloud against this murder ; there is a cloud of gloom and hatred over the great slaughter cities.

The law protects cats and dogs against cruelty.

We all rejoice to see the little squirrels in the city parks come and take food from our hands, but as soon as there is money in the flesh or fur of an animal, man ceases to have regard for its right to live, and becomes its most dangerous foe, feeding and breeding it for gain, imposing suffering and hardships upon a fellow being for the sake of gold.

We have a heavy debt to pay to the lower creatures whose mentors we should be ; whose murderers we are, and the good law which works every to correct abuses will also in time relegate the habit of Eating murdered animals to the scrapheap of obsolete practices as cannibalism is now.

It is the nature of a beast of prey to eat any animal that comes in its path, and its organs are such that it must have that kind of a diet to exist, but EVERYTHING IS IN A STAGE OF BECOMING ; it is always changing to something higher.

Man, in his earlier stages of unfoldment, was also like the beasts of prey in certain respects; however, he is to become God-like and thus he must cease to destroy at some time in order that he may commence to create. Flesh food has fostered human ingenuity of a low order in the past ; it has served a purpose in our evolution; but we are now standing on the threshold of a new age when self-sacrifice and service will bring spiritual growth to humanity.

The evolution of the mind will bring a wisdom beyond our greatest conception, but before it will be safe to entrust us with that wisdom, we must become HARMLESS as doves, for otherwise we should be apt to turn it to such selfish and destructive purposes that it would be an inconceivable menace to our fellow men.

To avoid this the vegetarian diet must be adopted.

We have been taught that there is no life in the universe but the life of God ; that "in Him we live and move and have our being" ; that His life animates everything that is, and therefore we naturally understand that as soon as we take LIFE we are destroying FORM built by God for his manifestation.

The lower animals are evolving Spirits and have sensibilities.

It is their desire for experience that causes them to build their various FORMS, and when we take their forms away from them we deprive them of their opportunity for gaining experience.

We hinder their evolution instead of helping them, and the day will come when we shall feel a deep disgust at the thought of making our stomachs the burying ground for the carcasses of murdered animals. All true Christians will be abstainers from flesh foods out of pure compassion ; they will realize that all life is God's life, and to cause suffering to any sentient being is wrong.

In a great many places where the Bible speaks of "meat," it is very plain that flesh food is not meant. The chapter in Genesis where man's food is first allotted to him says that he should eat of every tree and herb bearing seed, "and to you it shall be for meat."

The most evolved people at all times have abstained from flesh foods.

We see, for instance, Daniel, who was a holy man and a wise man, beg that he might not be forced to eat meat, but that he and his companions be given pulse. The children of Israel in the wilderness are spoken of as "lusting after flesh," and their God is angry with them in consequence.

There is an esoteric meaning to the feeding of the multitude where fish was used as food, but looking to the purely material aspect we may sum up the points in our answer by reiterating that we shall some time outgrow flesh and fish Eating as we have risen above cannibalism. Whatever license may have been given in the barbaric past will disappear in the altruistic future, when more refined sensibilities shall have awakened us to a fuller sense of the horrors involved in the gratification of a carnivorous taste.

In the most sublime of all prayers, we are taught by the Christ to pray for our daily bread, but under existing modern conditions, alas, how often do we get a stone instead.

Because of our complex civilization, of cold storage methods, and other abominations our food is such that, generally speaking, instead of nourishing the body as it should, it depletes us and makes us subject to various diseases; "indigestible" is a very mild arraignment of the food supply in most places where the public eats.

Even in the home, that which is placed upon the table to nourish and sustain and build the body in health, is often only an apology for food, masquerading under various seasonings and dressings as palatable, for we eat usually to please our palate rather than to nourish our bodies.

On the other hand, there is no denying that some people who profess to cook along scientific lines and with common sense, who profess to be vegetarians and are very strict in their notions of how food should be prepared, seem to lack all appreciation of the fact that food may be made palatable as well as wholesome and nutritious, that there is no incompatibility between the requirements of proper cooking and the pleasure afforded to the palate.

Indeed it may be said that unless food is so cooked that it is pleasing to the palate as well as wholesome and nutritious, it falls far short of its full purpose. The palate has been given to us so that we may enjoy our food, that we may, as it were, receive it with gladness and welcome it into our body, for this furthers assimilation and nutrition, whereas unpalatable food is obnoxious to the recipient and therefore not so easily assimilated.

This fact should be kept before the mind : It is not how much we eat that counts, but how much we assimilate.

Some who have been improperly instructed in this most important subject of nutrition may have been told that the legumes, peas, beans, etc., will take the place of meat, and they then commenced to devour these vegetables in great quantities after discarding meat.

It is perfectly true that beans contain more protein than beefsteak, but the protein contained in the bean is not so readily assimilated.

There is heavy waste and also uric acid in such foods that should be reckoned with, for unless counteracted by plenty of green vegetables, disastrous results are bound to follow. It is important to remember, however, that the green vegetables should not be eaten at the same meal with the heavy legumes.

There are others who, after leaving the meat diet, start to live on bread, potatoes, and similar starchy foods, with the result that they become undernourished and anemic. A satisfactory diet must be properly balanced in every respect, and only in so far as we study the system of diet required to keep our body in good health can we expect to obtain the proper results.

Diet, like health, is determined individually, and no general standard can be set up. At the same time, it may be safely said that the less meat we can get along with, the better our general health will be. But if we wish to without it altogether, it is absolutely essential that we should study a table of food values so that we get the necessary proteins from the vegetables we eat. No man can go to the ordinary table and get sufficient nourishment if he eats only the vegetables provided as accessories to the meat ; he must have beans, peas, nuts, and like foods which are rich in protein to take the place of the discarded flesh, or he will starve.

Max Heindel   Cosmogonie des Rose+Croix