Do we retard the evolution of plants by eating them?

All kingdoms are traveling toward developing a selfhood, and each member gradually develops it as he enters higher kingdoms. For example, in the mineral kingdom, the spirit is locked and it advances through the fire of Nature. In the vegetable kingdom, each plant and tree is ensouled with the spirit not yet individualized but, rather, in a state which can be explained as follows:

All vegetable forms, bushes, and trees are like dewdrops which when they evaporate, become parts of a cloud. This cloud has many gradations. The huge pine tree and the grass do not go to the same level, but they do go to the same chemical formation and come back and produce a new plant. The important point to realize is that the gradations of the cloud advance and develop as a whole, not as individual trees, bushes, etc. A part of the cloud comes again and forms another tree, but the essence of this tree is not of any individual, particular tree.

For example, I have two hundred bottles of water. Each of them contains the same water. I pour them into a barrel and again fill my bottles with the water; it does not make any difference.

But each time a tree is exposed to different influences, the essence of the tree develops, and so does the "cloud". This is why, when we eat plants, we do not retard the individual process of development. When eating them fresh, we give to their essence the experience of a higher form of existence.

But the case of animals is different. The animal spirit is not a cloud, but it is separated into stable forms. In eating an animal we stop its progress as a separate being and retard its evolution toward higher kingdoms.

Killing a man is a greater crime because the human spirit is not only separated from the mass spirit but also individualized. In the animal stage, the spirit is functioning on the astral plane and is still not completely a self. In the human stage, the human soul is himself; all Cosmos is within the soul as a microcosm.

Karma heavily strikes those who shed human blood because they retard not only the progress of individuals but also the progress of those with whom those individuals were connected.


-Torkom Saraydarian
Other Worlds