Why would I want to make a cemetery of my stomach for the corpses of murdered animals?

Spiritually, meat-and-blood eating is untenable. For thousands of years the most spiritually advanced souls on this planet have practised and taught vegetarianism. They understood—like the Eskimo shaman—the repercussive consequences of taking innocent life. Even if it is not you doing the killing, through participation in that death, by supporting the slaughterman’s deeds and eating the dead remains, some of the karma of the slaughterer adheres to the karmic debt in the subliminal storehouse of your psyche.

But even without karmic consequences, or a concern for animal welfare, consumption of flesh and blood brings us down. It densens our spiritual natures. Try eating meat for a week, then eating vegetables and fruit for a week and feel the difference. People who are insensitive we call ‘thick-skinned.’ This is not just a metaphor, but literal. By eating thick-skinned animals our own hide grows thicker. I have seen this occurrence in many meat-eaters. Some people may enjoy being thick-skinned. But I prefer to remain sensitive. After over forty years of being vegetarian, I am now 66 and my skin is still as smooth as a baby. And after any accident, my skin repairs itself very quickly.

Meat-eaters try to object that we are still killing vegetables and plants for consumption, stating that experiments have proven that they too have primitive feelings of love and apprehension. This is true. However, I once had a mystical experience when biting into an apple, during which I entered into the ‘mind’ of the cells of the apple and experienced the joy of plant-consciousness being transmuted into human consciousness, which was its natural function. In this, I understood that fruit and vegetables are not destroyed, but instantly transformed and raised to a higher frequency.

I cannot say the say the same occurs by cutting the throat of an animal. Its life is instantly curtailed. If I am unable to give life to any creature, who am I to take it?

In any case, does a meat eater eat carnivorous animals? Interestingly, he eats only vegetarian animals. Why is this? Does he instinctively know that animals raised on a vegetarian diet are more nourishing for the body? And the strongest creatures in the world are vegetarian: elephants, rhinos, horses, buffaloes, etc., (and we even speak in terms of ‘horse-power’).

A meat-eater is therefore only a second-hand vegetarian. Why not eat the vegetables and fruits directly?

To conclude, the body and mind cannot hope to be purified when the diet is not sattvic—that is, simple, clean and pure, and consisting of vegetables and fresh fruits, which are best suited to our physiological constitution. Blood and meat inflame the passions and dull the brain. One of the greatest sages of our time, Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi, stated:

“Since diet regulation develops the sattvic quality of the mind, it will help a long way in Self-enquiry [experiencing God-ness in oneself]. Therefore, what is the need for one, due to confusion, to long for any other observances? Diet-regulation alone will suffice.”  

In the light of all that, I don’t feel that it is vegetarians who have any need to justify their diet.

                                                                                                                                                                                                      Muz Murray
                                                                                                                                                                                             (Ramana Baba)

Information on Muz and his work can be found at: www.mantra-yoga.com