INTRODUCTORY.
Vegetarianism from a Theosophical standpoint involves a whole philosophy of life. The short quotation on our title page well expresses the theosophic concept of the Unity of life, and the law of cause and effect which we call Karma. Life is fundamentally a unit, and aught that works ill to any manifestation thereof has effect on all. Through occult science we are taught a very practical lesson of direct benefit to the individual, by a diet free from blood. As clearly stated in Annie Besant’s manual on “Man and his Bodies,” man molds these instruments of his will, or true self. These bodies are but instruments; in no sense the man himself; and these instruments or bodies are finely responsive to the operator, or true self, only as they are purified and harmonized. Gross foods, and gluttony make gross bodies, not only physical, but astral as well. For the astral bodies feed on the subtle emanations of the foods supplying nutriment to the physical encasement. If, through the consumption of meats we feed the astral on the emanations of blood or animal life, we intensify the gross desire-nature of the astral man, intensify the passional-nature, and at death, when the physical body is cast aside as a discarded garment, the dense, gross, astral body is held to corresponding planes in the realm of the astral; thus the purgatory of the Roman church becomes a very real and uncomfortable experience. If, on the contrary, clean habits of life have purified the astral body, when it is liberated at the hour of death from the prison house of flesh it is not of the same degree of density as the lower astral planes, and it passes on to the sunlit meadows of that world and away from its slums.
Alcohol has also a most pernicious effect on the astral vehicle, and for that reason is eliminated from the food of the occultist. It is a great mistake to give to the perishing, alcohol, or narcotics, as it has really a more serious effect on the out-going astral than on the physical encasement. When man learns to live on clean food, to have clean habits and to think clean, generous thoughts, there is naught in all this wonderful universe that he need fear.
PRACTICAL
VEGETARIAN COOKERY.