The Reason Why

by Radha Burnier

An extract from ‘On The Watch Tower’ in ‘The Theosophist’ journal August 1996
Also reprinted in the TOS journal ‘The Service Link’

The Theosophical Society imposes no restrictions on the lives of its members; they are free to adopt any lifestyle that suits them. The obligations members take upon themselves, voluntarily of course, are indicated by the Objects of the Society to which they subscribe while enrolling themselves.

A question occasionally arises about the dietary norm adopted at theosophical centres, conferences, summer schools and so forth, where only vegetarian food is made available. Now and again a member remarks that HPB herself was not a vegetarian, implying that Theosophy and vegetarianism are unconnected.

Theosophy, however, is the recognition, followed later by full realisation, of life as one indivisible whole. For the smallest as well as the greatest forms of life, there exists only one form of sustenance and energy, by whatever name it is called. The unitary nature of life is the basis, not only of the First Object of the Society, namely universal brotherhood without any distinctions whatsoever, but also of the other Objects. The heart of every great religion is unity which when lived, is love. All the profounder perceptions in the fields of philosophy and science are also converging towards this central truth. And as each person enters deeply into his or her own consciousness and understands how Nature works, the truth and beauty of the unbreakable whole illumines human consciousness.

Therefore, when arrangements are made for conferences and other events on behalf of the Society, in accordance with the foundational principle of the oneness and sacredness of all life, food that causes the least injury and harm is chosen.

In The Key to Theosophy HPB says:

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 ‘animalising’ 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.

The enquirer retorts, “Then he had better not eat at all?”, to which the answer of the Theosophist is stated by HPB:

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 their inner faculties and powers.

There is thus good reason why at officially organised gatherings of the Society, the food provided is vegetarian. The minimum harm is done to other creatures; and respect for life – the life which is not ‘ours’ or ‘theirs’, but one – is maintained. Plants do not have a nervous system and do not suffer pain in the same way as more evolved creatures which do have it. One day, if some other form of food derived from minerals, or even air, is at hand, that may be preferred at officially organised functions! Oriental traditions suggest this possibility.

All the while, individual members remain free to follow their own course in diet, for a lifestyle based on unity must be the result of intellectual conviction or intuitive realisation and not of dogma.

Conditions were very different in HPB’s days. The enormous cruelty of intensive farming and profit-oriented genetic manipulation did not exist then, nor did the vast and urgent ecological issue of expending grain and water on breeding animals as a business. The intellectual reasons against systematic practice of cruelty, ecological imprudence and wrong notions about health care are strong. It is to be hoped that increasingly TS members and others will come to intuitive recognition of the unity of all life as the only sure basis of universally beneficent action.