Lecture I

Let us now take the grossest case, when a man eats animal flesh. In an animal we have a living being which carries on the process of organisation further than the plant, it carries it to a certain stage beyond the plant organisation. We may therefore say of the animal that it continues the process of organisation begun by the plant. Let us now suppose that a man eats the animal; what then occurs is, in a sense, as follows: It is not now necessary for the man to exercise the inner forces that he would have had to exercise if he had eaten a plant. If he had been obliged to organise the food from where the plant had left off, he would have had to use certain forces. These forces are not used when he eats animal flesh, for the animal has already carried the organisation of the plant to a certain higher stage, and the man need only begin at this point. Thus we may say that he does not continue the work of organisation from the stage at which he might have done, but he leaves unused forces that are within him, and only continues the organising process from a later stage; he lets the animal do part of the work that he would have had to do if he had eaten the plant food. Now the well-being of an organism does not consist in its doing as little as possible, but in its really bringing all its forces into activity. When a man eats animal flesh he does with the forces which, if he were to eat plant food alone, would develop organic activities, exactly what he would do if he said: ‘I will do without my left arm, I will bind it down so that it cannot be used.’ Thus he fetters his forces within him when he eats animal flesh, forces which he would call upon if he were to eat plant food, and condemns them to inactivity. But, through their condemnation to inactivity, it comes about that the organisations in question which would otherwise be active remain fallow, they are crippled and become hardened. So that when a man eats animal flesh he kills a part of his organism, or at least disables it, This part which thus becomes hardened he carries with him through life as a foreign body. In normal life a man does not feel this foreign body, but when his organism becomes more inwardly mobile, and when his various systems of organs become more independent of one another, as happens in theosophical life, then his physical body, which even without this feels uncomfortable, begins to feel still more uncomfortable, because it now has a foreign body within it. As already mentioned, we are not promulgating any special cause, but are only concerned with presenting the truth; and we shall learn other effects of animal food; we shall go into this subject more minutely in the course of these lectures. Hence it comes about that progress in the inner theosophical life gradually produces a sort of disgust for animal food. It is not necessary to forbid animal food to Theosophists, for the healthy progressing life of instinct gradually turns against animal food, and no longer likes it; and this is much better than becoming a vegetarian from any abstract principle. It is best when Theosophy leads a man to have a sort of disgust and loathing for animal food; and it is not of much use, with respect to what may be called his higher development, if a man gives up animal food for other reasons. So that we may say: Animal food produces in man something that is a burden to his physical body, and this burden is felt. That is the occult fact of the matter looked at from one side.