Meditation & Yoga
Spiritual Benefits of a Vegetarian Diet
Spiritual Benefits of a Vegetarian Diet presents a spiritual rather than merely nutritional case for vegetarianism. Its central concern is consciousness: how the food taken into the body may influence the clarity, responsiveness, and direction of the mind, and therefore either support or hinder meditation and spiritual development.
Swami Nirmalananda Giri approaches diet through a metaphysical model in which food contributes not only to the physical body but also to subtler levels of energy, sensation, thought, and will. Within the book’s framework, the quality of those energies affects the mind from which they are formed and conditions its capacity for inward awareness.
Vegetarianism is therefore presented as a practical aid to purification, concentration, higher perception, and the intentional evolution of consciousness. The book explains why diet matters to a meditator and how lighter food energies may make the mind more responsive to spiritual practice. This is the author’s spiritual and metaphysical treatment, not a modern clinical nutrition handbook; scientific, medical, historical, or physiological claims are presented as arguments made in the book.
A major second section, “Christian Vegetarianism,” examines Biblical passages, early Christian traditions, saints, and historical arguments concerning abstention from meat. Rather than treating vegetarianism as foreign to Christianity, Swami Nirmalananda places it within a broader Christian spiritual and ascetical context.
The book is intended for meditators and yoga practitioners interested in the relation between diet and practice, Christians exploring vegetarian traditions within their faith, and spiritual seekers considering how food may affect consciousness and subtle energy. The complete volume may be read or downloaded free.
A book to live with
Why Read This Book?
Explore diet and consciousness—why the book sees food as directly affecting the quality, clarity, and responsiveness of the mind.
Understand how vegetarian eating is presented as supporting meditation, purification, higher perception, and conscious spiritual evolution.
Examine the subtle side of food through its relation to biomagnetic, sensory, intellectual, and will-level energies.
Discover Christian vegetarianism through Biblical passages, early Christian traditions, saints, and arguments from within Christianity.
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From the Book
From the Book
Diet and Consciousness
Although diet is commonly considered a matter of physical health alone, since the Hermetic principle “as above, so below” is a fundamental truth of the cosmos, diet is a crucial aspect of emotional, intellectual, and spiritual development. For diet and consciousness are interrelated, and purity of diet is an effective aid to purity and clarity of consciousness. “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8).
The purification of our subtler levels depends upon the purification of our physical entity. This makes sense when we realize that all that goes to constitute a human being is formed of energies of various types, and the only source of energy is that which is brought into the body through sunlight, air, and food. And it is material food that provides by far the greatest amount of the energy from which our multi-leveled being is formed.
From the BookDiet and Meditation+
As stated at the very beginning, the bondage and liberation of an individual is exclusively a matter of his mind, and the process of liberation is a matter of purifying and transmuting the mind. Since the mind is formed of the subtle energies of that which we eat, we can realize that diet is one of the most crucial aspects of the spiritual aspirant’s regimen, for it will determine the quality and effectiveness of his meditation experience.
Just as soft wax readily takes the impression of a stamp and retains it–in contrast to cold, hard wax–so the mind formed of light and pure food energies will respond most readily and permanently to the liberating effects produced by meditation. Diet, then, can be a major determinant of our success or failure in spiritual life.
From the BookThe Spiritual Value of Vegetarianism+
The major thing to keep in mind when considering the subject of vegetarianism is its relevancy in relation to our explorations of consciousness. We need only ask: Does it facilitate my spiritual growth–the development and expansion of my consciousness? The answer is Yes.
That this is true is demonstrated in the Second Book of Esdras. (This book was originally in the Bible–including the King James Version–but was later removed by the Protestant denominations.) When Esdras pled with God for prophetic guidance, God told him: “Go into a field of flowers, where no house is builded, and eat only the plants of the field; taste no flesh, drink no wine, but eat plants only; And pray unto the Highest continually, then will I come and talk with thee. So I went my way into the field which is called Ardath, like as he commanded me; and there I sat among the plants, and did eat of the herbs of the field, and the same satisfied me” (Second Esdras 9:24-26).
After seven days Esdras received a revelation from the Lord, but first he had to refine his mental energies by diet–mere devotion and prayer was not enough. (Nor would diet have availed anything without prayer.)
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