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Episode 12 - Man's Duty Towards Nature · Vegetarianism and Occultism

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  Section twelve, man's duty towards nature. Then there is the far more important,
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  unselfish side of the question, that of man's duty towards nature. Every
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  religion has taught that man should put himself always on the side of the will
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  of God in the world, on the side of good as against evil,
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  of evolution, as against retrogression. The man who ranges himself on the side
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  of evolution realizes the wickedness of destroying life. He knows that just as he
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  is here in this physical body in order that he may learn the lessons of
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  this plain, so is the animal occupying his body for the same reason,
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  and that through it he may gain experience at his lower stage. He knows
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  that the life behind the animal is the divine life, that all life in
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  the world is divine, That animals, therefore are truly our brothers, even
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  though they may be younger brothers, And we have no sort of right to
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  take their lives for the gratification of our perverted taste, no right to cause
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  them untold agony and suffering, merely to satisfy our degraded and detestable us.
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  We have brought things to such a pass with our miscalled sport and our wholesale
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  slaughterings that all wild creatures fly from the sight of us. Does that seem
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  like the universal brotherhood of God's creatures? Is that your idea of the golden
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  age of the worldwide kindliness? That is to come a condition when every living
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  thing flees from the face of man because of his murderous instincts. There is
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  an influence flowing back upon us from all this, an effect which you can
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  hardly realize unless you are able to see how it looks when regarded with the
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  sight of the higher plane. Every one of these creatures which you so ruthlessly
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  murder in this way, has its own thoughts and feelings with regard to all
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  this. It has horror, pain, and indignation, and an intense but
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  unexpressed feeling of the hideous injustice of it. All. The whole atmosphere about
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  us is full of it. Twice lately I have heard from psychic people that
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  they felt the awful aura or surroundings of Chicago, even many miles away from
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  it. Missus Bissant herself told me the same thing years ago in England,
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  that long before she came in sight of Chicago, she felt the horror of
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  it, and the deadly pall of depression descending upon her, and asked,
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  where are we and what is the reason that there should be this terrible feeling
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  in the air. To sense the effect as clearly as this is beyond the
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  reach of the person who is not developed. But though all the inhabitants may
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  not be directly conscious of it and recognize it, as Missus Bissant did,
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  they may be sure that they are suffering from it unconsciously, and that that
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  terrible vibration of horror and fear and injustice is acting upon every one of them,
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  even though they do not know it. End of Section twelve.