Cosmic Union by Vegetarian Food

Rudolf Steiner sagte in Bezug auf fleischlose Kost:

Austrian scientist and philosopher Rudolf Steiner explains:

Text Box: It is interesting to compare three kinds of food in relation to their cosmic significance - First, milk and milk products, secondly the plants and the foods that are prepared from them, and finally flesh foods. From occult observation of the cosmos you would find milk substance on earth, but on no other planet of our solar system. What is produced in a similar manner within the organism of living beings on other planets in our solar system would be something totally different from terrestrial milk. If we examine the plant system of our earth, and compare it occultly with the plant systems of other planets, with what corresponds to it on other planets, we must say that the forms of the plants on our earth are different from those of other planets on our solar system, but the inner being of the plants on earth is not merely terrestrial, but belongs to the solar system, that is, that the plant-nature of our earth is related to that of the other planets of our solar system. Thus there is a solar element in our plants that can also be found on other planets of our solar system. As for the animal kingdom, it follows from what has been said about milk that the animal kingdom on earth - and this can easily be demonstrated occultly - is radically different from any corresponding kingdom on other planets. Everything that milk supplies to the human organism prepares man for life on earth, unites him with terrestrial conditions, but does not actually chain him to the earth. It makes him a citizen of the earth, but does not prevent him at the

Text Box: “Flesh food has a different effect. Through a meat diet he binds himself especially to the planet earth. Whilst milk enables him to be a citizen of the earth, as a temporary stage in his development, flesh food condemns him, unless he is raised to a higher stage by something else, to make his sojourn on earth a permanent sojourn to which he adapts himself completely.

Text Box: “Vegetarian diet is a diet that stimulates in the organism those forces which bring man into a kind of cosmic union with the whole of the planetary system.”

Text Box: “Let us take, for example, protein which is present in the hen's egg. We must clearly understand that this animal protein is not merely what the chemist finds in his analysis, but that, in its structure, it is the result of cosmic forces. Fundamentally these cosmic forces only work upon the protein after they have first acted upon the earth itself and above all upon the moon which accompanies the earth. The cosmic influences upon protein are therefor indirect; they first act upon the earth which, in its turn, reacts upon the composition of the protein with the forces it receives from the cosmos. It is the moon which plays the major part, but only because it first receives the forces from the cosmos and then, with the forces that it radiates, reacts upon the animal protein. It could not originate directly out of the cosmos; it is entirely a product of that

Text Box: “Again, what we know as the fatty substance of living beings which also forms part of human food, especially of those who eat meat, has a different effect. What we call fat, irrespective of whether a person eats it or whether the body itself manufactures it, is built up in accordance with entirely different cosmic laws from those which form protein. Whilst the cosmic forces of the Beings of the Spirits of Form are concerned with the latter, those Beings called the Spirits of Movement are chiefly concerned with the production of the fatty substance. No living being could assimilate protein on the one hand, of fat on the other hand, without the cooperation from the cosmos, even though indirectly, of the Spirits of Form and the Spirits of Movement. As the whole physical organism becomes more mobile the soul learns to distinguish two different experiences; one which so permeates us inwardly that we feel: to this I owe my physical organisation, my physical form...we are then aware of the proteins within us. And when we feel: this makes us indifferent to our inner isolation, this lifts us, as it were,

Text Box: “The consumption of sugar creates, as it were, a kind of innocent egohood which may form a counterpoise to the necessary selflessness in the moral and spiritual sphere. Otherwise man would all too easily be tempted to become not only selfless, but also to become a dreamer and visionary, to lose the capacity for sound judgement on mundane affairs.

Text Box: “These things may even lead to an understanding of something that can also be observed externally. In countries where, according to statistics, sugar consumption is low, the inhabitants have a less defined personality than in countries where consumption is high. If you visit countries where the people show more individuality, where each individual is self-contained, and then move on to countries where the inhabitants betray more the typical racial characteristics, show less individuality in their outward appearance, you will find that in the former countries sugar consumption is high, in the latter very low."