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Click here to listen to The Yoga Life 5: The Importance of Vegetarianism for the Yogi if you do not see the player above. The podcast length is 15:41 minutes.
Since we have considered shaucha in the last podcast which includes purity of diet, let’s take a brief look at the spiritual benefits of being a vegetarian yogi.
The mind, as a mass of vibrating energy, is limited by the constitution or condition of that energy. If the energy is heavy or inert, little can be done with it to produce the state of silence and clarity needed to reflect the truth of spirit. Certain elements darken the mind and make it thick or heavy, vibrating very slowly–sometimes seemingly not at all.
On the other hand, some elements lighten the mind, making it fluid and subtle, vibrating at a very high level. It is this latter condition that is needed for attaining the state of liberation–or rather, the state that liberates the spirit from the illusion of bondage and suffering. It is really the mind that becomes liberated, but that liberation also affects the essentially ever-free spirit and sets it free. To attain such liberation the mind must be purified and refined, vegetarian diet being one of the best and strongest means for its purification.
We cannot get a marble statue from clay, nor can we get wheat bread from barley meal–the end product is still going to consist of the nature of the material started with. So it is with all our bodies, gross and subtle. They will reflect the character of the food which has gone into their formation.
It is obvious, then, that the food we eat is going to determine the quality and condition of all the levels of our being, including body and mind.
Therefore when we eat something, it not only affects us on all levels of our existence, it becomes those levels. In this very real sense we indeed are what we eat.
Listen to The Yoga Life 5: The Importance of Vegetarianism for the Yogi to hear much more practical information.