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Why are yogis/yoginis Vegetarian?

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Jitendra Hy-do-u-no-us?
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« Reply #15 on: May 15, 2015 02:45 pm »

I wanted to comment that simply being vegetarian does not make one person more spiritual then the other.
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...but I wanted to comment that simply being vegetarian does not make one person more spiritual then the other.

Of course not, Oddang, I agree, vegetarianism is sometimes a consequence of a spiritual Outlook, sure not a cause.
Although a fit body may improve mental fitness, it is told.

I turned veggie for health reasons, not for spiritual reasons. I suddenly realized that meat was the wrong food for me and my health improved dramatically when I switched.

I also remember I loved fishing but eventually quit to catch and eat fish because I couldn't stand the expression of the eyes of the dying fish. That fish did nothing to me and I did not really need it for survival.

We all have done things for various reasons. Yes though... initially i did become a vegetarian for spiritual reasons. I did not believe that "simply being a vegetarian/vegan would make one person more spiritual then another". Rather; i believed it would make me more spiritual and less restless so I could open up to more spiritual experiences. Which for me has proven to be true. Diet does affect your mental states, emotions and physical state. Over the years it has become very apparent to me by watching people with different diets and their health, attitudes and behavior.
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« Reply #16 on: May 15, 2015 10:07 pm »

I think you're right about that, Steve.    If it's true that everything has vibration, then food also has vibration.  I'm sure Master talks about that, as we all know.    I would rather take in the vibrations of healthy plant based food than the fear, frustration, anger and pain vibrations that must emanate from animal products.   It must affect us on some level.   

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« Reply #17 on: May 15, 2015 11:45 pm »

Laila, to be honest, as Jagadi Chandra Bose first pointed out, even plants have feelings and consciousness.

So we cannot rule out that there are some vibrations of fear, pain  and anger in the plant food we consume. Not in most fruits of course, but some vegetbles have to be killed before being eaten.

Even the essene diet, which eliminates vegetables which are killed to be eaten, suggests a bread made out of sprouts.

Sprouts are the newborn babies of the vegetable realm. So, by eating sprouts, we eat newborns. Let's face it.

Even if we eat seeds and legumes, we are goign to kill a potential plant. Even when seeds are toasted, we partecipated to the Killing of a potential plant.

Plants are creatures of God, so they should be given guarantees.

To bring it to the extreme, mantaining the same logic, even by being pure fruitarians, we cannot but eat some germs and bacteria. These are living creatures and we would kill them at times, at least those who cannot survive inside the digestive tract. We inflcit suffering to them poor critters.

Bottom line: In this imperfect dimension, it is not possible to mantain the body without inflicting some suffering to other creatures.
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« Reply #18 on: May 16, 2015 04:41 am »

Cheesy I was expecting the "plants have feelings" argument to come along any minute.   Wink     It's a bit of a desperate argument really, isn't it ?   Do you honestly feel the same way about killing a dog, a cat,  or any other animal as you do about cutting into a cucumber or a carrot ?    With all due respect to Dr. Bose, there is no way that a vegetable feels the same pain and emotional stress as an animal.    Plants are alive, but they are not sentient.   There is a big difference.    Here's what Dr. Will Tuttle, author of The Peace Diet, said in response to the same question ……

http://gentleworld.org/plants-feel-pain-too-whats-a-vegan-to-do/
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« Reply #19 on: May 16, 2015 05:31 am »

Cheesy I was expecting the "plants have feelings" argument to come along any minute.   Wink     It's a bit of a desperate argument really, isn't it ?   Do you honestly feel the same way about killing a dog, a cat,  or any other animal as you do about cutting into a cucumber or a carrot ?    With all due respect to Dr. Bose, there is no way that a vegetable feels the same pain and emotional stress as an animal.    Plants are alive, but they are not sentient.   There is a big difference.    Here's what Dr. Will Tuttle, author of The Peace Diet, said in response to the same question ……

http://gentleworld.org/plants-feel-pain-too-whats-a-vegan-to-do/

Like it Laila i was looking for this and you handed it to me:

"Right now, for example, we are destroying about an acre per second of Amazonian rainforest in order to grow soybeans to feed imprisoned animals for meat, dairy products, and eggs that are consumed right here in this country. Cutting down an acre of rainforest is not just killing trees; it is also destroying webs of life that took millions of years to evolve, resulting in loss of habitat for both animals and plants, and driving the largest mass extinction of species in 65 million years. The oceans are similarly being overfished for fish for both human and livestock consumption, similarly driving extinction, climate destabilization, and environmental destruction.

With more research, I began moving toward a vegan lifestyle, and I learned that forests throughout the entire world have been, and continue to be, destroyed in order to grow corn, soy, alfalfa, and other feedstock for enslaved animals. I discovered that people who research the impact of animal agriculture on forests estimate that a person who switches from a standard western diet to a vegan diet saves at least 100 trees every year! It takes a small fraction of land, water, and petroleum to feed someone eating a plant-based diet, compared with someone eating a typical meat- and dairy-based diet. So it became crystal clear to me that anyone who professes to love plants and trees is unequivocally called to practice vegan living."


Will continue reading.... i think we must remember that we came from the mineral kingdom and then the plant kingdom to the insect and then the animal kingdom before having the ability to express divine consciousness as humans. With this succession in mind it is easier to understand that fruits and vegetables should be our food of choice. We are encouraging our pets and animals to move up in the evolutionary scheme. This is not too possible if we are eating them. Need more time to digest so much wonderful info u are submitting here... thanks Laila

Steve
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« Reply #20 on: May 16, 2015 12:49 pm »

Laila, first of all, it is definitely true that animals are above plants in the evolutionary scale. As it is true that some animals are more evolved than Others, and that some humans are more evolved than Others.

But that just sounds like a fake, even Dangerous  argument. If I should inflict 'suffering', in a general context to the less evolved souls, then, if faced with the possibility to inflict pain or Death to a primitive native of an African tribe just out of the paleolithic and to a Citizen of the USA with a phD, I should choose the primitive African.

This because:

1) He's very likely in the first stages of human reincarnation, so by definition he's less evolved, spiritually, mentally, socially.
2)He's much less sensitive to pain than the civilized American with a Ph.D. I'm speaking from a little personal knowledge here, I was interested in anthropology in my Youth and I personally met the tribes of the highlands in Papua New Guinea. Just out of the paleolithic.

So, by the same your reasonings, the life of a primitive man is less Worth than the life of a civilized man and, taken to the extreme, slave trade was justified because it entailed a sacrifice of the less evolved Africans to benefit the more evolved westerners.

Fact is that, by the same token you say lactarians partake of the cruelty inflicted to cows, I can say that vegans partake to the cruelty inflicted to plants. Of course lactarians accumulate  more sins (cows+plants) than vegans, but then it is a quantitative reasoning, not a qualitative one. Not to say that eating sprouts to me feels like eating babies. I had this very definite insight once, when I was eating sprouted corns. I was suddenly put in tune with their very elementary consciousness and I was able to connect their state to newborn babies. I've never eaten sprouts since then.

Who eats sprouts, conceptually is a baby killer. As I, who drink milk, partake to the Killing of redundant baby calves. Only I don't see the calves, whereas I see the baby sprouts when eating them.

Lactarians and vegans partake of the same sins.
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« Reply #21 on: May 16, 2015 03:32 pm »

i thought the issue here was the treatment of animals not whether we are lactarians or vegans. Did i miss something? To give an example: yesterday i bought eggs from a local farmer.  She showed me the chickens running in the yard. i do not feel as though i was being cruel to these animals. i think using the excuse that you do not see the cruelty is tantamount to what the Germans said about the Jews in WWll. Many of them claimed they knew nothing about those atrocities. i found a quote by Sri Yukteswar in the Holy Science.

As an SRFer i have been exposed to the evolutionary progression of the soul from mineral to plant to animal and then to the human kingdom. With this model in view it becomes apparent eating for instance sprouts would be preferable to eating dogs.
To mccoy; i will say though if u had a spiritual experience with sprouts i can respect your view.

i found a quote by Sri Yukteswar in the Holy Science in which he spends many pages discussing observing and drawing conclusions as to what is the natural food for humans. "Hence by these observations the only conclusion that can be  (must read his conclusions) reasonably drawn is that various grains, fruits roots and-for beverage milk, and pure water openly exposed to air and sun are decidedly the best natural food for man."

i ate a couple small bowls of Raisin Bran this morning with some coconut almond drink and was amazed how many vitamins were packed in that cereal.
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« Reply #22 on: May 16, 2015 06:11 pm »



I don't agree however, that being vegetarian makes one more spiritually attuned then a non-vegetarian. To think of the countless tribes that exist to this day, where little is known about their existence, who preserve humanity and commune with nature deeper then your every day millennial. Their structures, which are emerging in documentaries and other unpopular sources eat meat but do so with reverence. We are all human. To say we are more advanced then a native tribe is perspective. What happens when our own advances as a society collapse? Who is better off then?

The shaman, hunter, gatherer, these are people who understand the laws of nature more so then I. Their respect for the natural world has cultivated a deep spirituality in their community and in themselves. ....

i just read something by Sri Yukteswar; ..."men gain a calmness of mind which every psychologist knows is the most favorable to mental activity and to a clear understanding, as well as a judicial way of thinking.... this is done by natural living on a non-irritant diet.

Eric i do not think we have a historical corollary to compare too as a whole group of people living in a spiritual manner. So in this sense you are drawing conclusions about native tribes who live close to nature without considering highly evolved civilizations. We are unable to presently study (with accuracy) these highly evolved civilizations as readily as some of your examples. However that does not mean they did not exist. So... we must also keep in mind that there were very high civilizations on this earth at times in the past and there will be again who express an ability to rise above their tribal and hunter tendencies.  We presently live in a period of rapid change-the dwapara yuga- when we pass thru this period we will enter much higher periods in which natural living of the past will have little or no relevancy to the spiritual evolution in those higher millennia.
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« Reply #23 on: May 16, 2015 11:27 pm »

i thought the issue here was the treatment of animals not whether we are lactarians or vegans. Did i miss something?
.... With this model in view it becomes apparent eating for instance sprouts would be preferable to eating dogs.

Steve, I think that Laila's insistence against milk and cheese is due to the fact that today it is difficult to find animals-friendly sources of dairy products. Difficult but not impossible. As you say, almost everywhere there are small family-run businesses which raise free-ranging chickens in a very friendly environment. In the mountains close to my place, sheep herding is presently little different from what it was 2000 years ago. Sheep browse around in the meadows, with big sheperd dogs who are pretty scary, to protect them agaisnt wolves. The milk from such sheep is totally natural. The lamb is either raised or killed for meat. It's never, I think, thrown away.
After all this discussion I'm goign to try and found such sources. In teh meanwhile I'm having biological products, which at least give a guarantee of a minimum of consideration toward the poor cows.

Sprouts and dogs: you should say 'puppies', lol, and alive. Yes, nobody but the most Vicious geek would think about eating puppies alive. Although I know they eat gold fish and frogs alive in contests.
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« Reply #24 on: May 17, 2015 06:49 am »

i thought the issue here was the treatment of animals not whether we are lactarians or vegans. Did i miss something? To give an example: yesterday i bought eggs from a local farmer.  She showed me the chickens running in the yard. i do not feel as though i was being cruel to these animals. i think using the excuse that you do not see the cruelty is tantamount to what the Germans said about the Jews in WWll. Many of them claimed they knew nothing about those atrocities. i found a quote by Sri Yukteswar in the Holy Science.

As an SRFer i have been exposed to the evolutionary progression of the soul from mineral to plant to animal and then to the human kingdom. With this model in view it becomes apparent eating for instance sprouts would be preferable to eating dogs.
To mccoy; i will say though if u had a spiritual experience with sprouts i can respect your view.

i found a quote by Sri Yukteswar in the Holy Science in which he spends many pages discussing observing and drawing conclusions as to what is the natural food for humans. "Hence by these observations the only conclusion that can be  (must read his conclusions) reasonably drawn is that various grains, fruits roots and-for beverage milk, and pure water openly exposed to air and sun are decidedly the best natural food for man."

i ate a couple small bowls of Raisin Bran this morning with some coconut almond drink and was amazed how many vitamins were packed in that cereal.

 It's so true what you say about WW II, Steve.   We can't ignore these atrocities, even though Big Ag does everything in their power to hide the truth from us.   Thank goodness for the brave animal rights activists who are willing to risk going undercover to expose the horrors that are going on.   And now that we know, we can't in good conscience ignore it.

Have you tried Quoinoa with almond milk ?   That's what I had today.   Quoinoa is a perfect protein, and is great as a cereal, in soups and stews, salads, etc.    There are so many interesting vegan foods that most people never try.   It's given me a renewed interest in cooking, which is good.    Smiley





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« Reply #25 on: Feb 03, 2023 10:37 am »

The change in my health when I switched from a carnivorous and unbalanced diet to a vegetarian balanced one was dramatic.

I was 16, and had a cronic cold, plus frequent fever and other mishaps. Suddenly, I decided my diet was not a good one. My family stressed the consumption of meat, fried food, sweets, little fresh fruit and vegetables. I reversed all that. In 6 months I was cured from chronic cold, which no medicines could cure. I enjoyed perfect health, did not get ill at all even though I started to practice extreme titikhsa, endurance to cold weather (and hot weather in the summer).

All it took was eliminating fish meat and fish, eliminating refined cereals, substituting honey and unrefined sugar to White sugar, eating plenty of fresh fruits, nuts and fresh and cooked vegetables. I also practiced hydroterapy, with application of cold water.

I got ill a few years later though when I went to the extremes. Cycles of fasting and overeating, extreme raw vegan diet. The Prana in my body was drained away.

Yoga is the path of moderation and discrimination.

I was happy to find your diet routine throughout the years mccoy. I understand your last paragraph about fasting and overeating. It took me quite awhile to get use to fasting - as the Master recommends once a week or three days a month. And I admittedly also went from fasting to over eating. Although over the years, I’ve had to talk to myself and remind myself when coming off a fast to slow down and take it easy with the food. Somewhat like talking to ourselves during meditation and reminding the mind to settle down. I have found it much easier when I can take a day off from a routine working schedule. The mind is less occupied with its usual source of energy and you can for instance just lay in bed and practice a mantra or take a beautiful nature walk that fills your senses with wonderful thoughts apart from the addiction to food. Then when you come back to eating you discipline your mind and thoughts with a slower intake of food but something that fulfills your minds ravishing behaviors. For instance, I’ll start out again with a smoothie or cottage cheese with Avocado or something that delights my watering mouth (lol). In all our activities we gain the ability to slow down and eventually control our appetites through the constant practice of meditation which gives us more patience with others which also starts with patience with ourselves.

Sure it is a result of moderation but from where does moderation spring? I have found that it comes from a constant reminder to say to ourselves, “come on little boy you can do it … just rest a little and get up after a bit and see that you have avoided binging and now you may get something light to eat or perhaps lay there and practice a mantra while you enjoy your new found discipline.

Mccoy in the discussion I feel like I’m talking to myself over the years. Attempting to cure my ravishing appetites. Just having moderate success now before I drop off and this body decays and is forgotten by me and everyone else. Quite an irony in the end of the story.
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« Reply #26 on: Feb 04, 2023 02:17 pm »


Mccoy in the discussion I feel like I’m talking to myself over the years. Attempting to cure my ravishing appetites. Just having moderate success now before I drop off and this body decays and is forgotten by me and everyone else. Quite an irony in the end of the story.

I too noticed a similar behaviour, I gained control and moderation only after a few decades of practice.

Presently, my diet and lifestyle behaviour has changed, I adhere to credible scientific evidence from researchers who probably managed to attend to the right spheres of God's thoughts and were successful in grasping the causal blueprint of a narrative. There si a whole field now with scientific protocols on healthspan and longevity. And I'll say many things are basically similar to what we know from Raja Yoga as preached by the great masters.

For example, the science of fasting has evolved and now I adhere to the 5 days fast mimicking diet elaborated by Dr. Valter Longo, an eminent biogerontologist.

Through ample research, he determined that the beneficial effects of a water-only fast can be achieved, in great part, by drastically decreasing the caloric intake and especially protein in a five days period.

In a few words, you are reaping the benefits of fasting but with much less effort, since you eat 750 kcals per day. I tried that multiple times and with me, it works very well.

The above is an example of how an improvement of traditional medicine by guys who are able to attune to the causal world of ideas, by repeated focus and concentration, and by rigorous experimentation.
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« Reply #27 on: Feb 05, 2023 12:20 am »

Do you really have the discipline to go on a water only fast? I am glad that Yogananda recommended a fruit juice fast so i can still get a hit of energy from the fructose while there is less energy because of the fasting.

Steve, I did not explain myself clearly.

I used to do water-only fasts, but I could only reach a max of 5 days and with exceptional effort and weight loss. And often binge refeeding, which is deleterious.

Presently Valter Longo devised a 5-day regime that yields similar biological results as a water-only fast while eating a very modest amount of food (750 kcal per day) and very little protein. This latter strategy, called a Fast Mimicking Diet, is the one that I'm following.

I also follow closely the fora and podcasts on longevity. There are a few people who have the discipline to go on 5-10 days of water-only fasting, continuing to work. These are pretty rare examples though, underlining the fact that there are, among non spiritual aspirants, very stoic, tough, disciplined people.

The 9-day cleansing diet of Yogananda is pretty good as well.
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