The Vegetarian Diet

There are phases of life and sometimes entire incarnations wherein an aspirant subjects himself to a discipline of food, just as there may be other phases or an entire life wherein a strict celibacy is temporarily enforced.  But there are other life cycles and incarnations wherein the disciple’s interest and his service lie in other directions.  There are later incarnations where there is no constant thought about the physical body, and a man works free of the diet complex and lives without concentration upon the form life, eating that food which is available and upon which he can best sustain his life efficiency.  In preparation for certain initiations, a vegetable diet has in the past been deemed essential.  But this may not always be the case, and many disciples prematurely regard themselves as in preparation for initiation.

Esoteric Healing, Page 334

This sixth Rule is the polar opposite of the rule as it was given to applicants.  There, if you will refer to my exegesis upon that rule in Initiation, Human and Solar, you will find that the objective of that rule was physical purification with the emphasis upon the need for a vegetarian diet at a certain stage of the preparatory process.  The reasons for such a discipline were two in number:  purification and the necessity for the applicant (at that stage) to refrain from sharing in the benefits incident to the so-called “taking of life.”  But, can one take life?  I think not.  Life IS.  Naught in heaven or on earth can touch or affect it.  This is a point oft forgotten.  The rule as given to applicants consequently concerns their ability to accept and adhere to a self-imposed discipline.  Through the means of that discipline, the control of the physical and astral natures are demonstrated by the applicant to himself, and the effect of the discipline is to reveal to him certain inevitable and basic weaknesses, such as control of the animal nature, the powerful imposition of desire, a sense of superiority, of pride and separativeness.  His ability to sustain the discipline and his appreciation of himself for so doing, plus a sense of superiority to those who are not so disciplined, are all indicative of essential weaknesses.  His fanaticism, latent or expressed, emerges in his consciousness with clarity, and—when he is sincere—he is conscious of having brought about a measure of physical purity; but at the same time, he is left with the awareness that he perhaps may be starting with the outer and the obvious when he should be beginning with the inner and with that which is not so easily contacted or expressed.  This is a great and most important lesson.

Rays and Initiations, Page 125

It is also our policy to leave the student entirely free as regards his private life.  The Arcane School imposes no physical disciplines upon the students; we do not require that a man should be a vegetarian, that he should not smoke or touch alcohol, as is frequently the case in occult schools.  We regard these matters as entirely his own affair and concern, and we feel that, given the right teaching, he will make his own adjustments in these matters.  We know that the soul imposes its own disciplines upon its agent, the personality.

Unfinished Autobiography, Page 285

Copyright by J J Dewey

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