ETHICAL VEGETARIANISM AS THE FOUNDATION OF UNIVERSAL PEACE
Da. JOHN H. MANAS, Ph. D., N.D.,
MS. D., Pay. D.
President, Pythagorean Society; Secretary-Treasurer, The American Naturopathic Association. Inc.; Dean, The American Maimonistic Academy of Art, Science and Ethics.

Pythagoras, the father, of Greek Philosophy, Mathematics, Music, Physiotherapy, and Metaphysics, in the 6th century B.C, is recognized as the Founder of Scientific Vegetarianism in Europe. The students of his School in Krotona, Italy, then Greater Greece, were carefully selected for their moral character. Responsibility for the tremendous power that knowledge places in the hands of man, for its abuse or misuse, cannot be trusted save only in a moral and self-disciplined man.

The first steps of the disciple was to cleanse his physical body of all impurities, his feelings of all abnormal emotions and his mind of all bad thoughts, and to learn self-control on all planes. This is accomplished only through a scientific vegetarian diet and other training.

Upon this vegetarian regime and other principles, which were spread to all the towns and cities of that region of Greece then, Good Health, Peace and Happiness prevailed for over thirty years.

All Pythagoreans then and now consider the killing of another living being of the animal kingdom a violation of the Cosmic Law of life. Since freedom of being rules in the Universe, no Spiritual Entity on the higher realms of the Cosmos has the right to interfere in the work of another Entity. The Cosmic Law is, that each Entity has to mind its own business along the work and the duty in hand.

The lower we go in the ladder of creation, we find more interference in the life of the animal kingdom by animals, due to the necessity of self preservation, in procuring their food for sustenance and in defending themsleves against other animals. The great struggle that exists in the animal kingdom, in which the weaker animal becomes the victim of the stronger, is a necessity of Nature in the scheme of her workings, which thus helps animals to grow a rudimentary consciousness in the ladder of evolution and to develop the the dormant qualities in them. Thus, the seeming "cruel" law of the jungle in this particular case is not a cruelty imposed upon the animals by Nature, but it serves as a method for the unfoldment of consciousness in the animal through danger, suffering, even death by a stronger animal, along the path of evolution of the animal kingdom.

However. for man, who is a spiritual being, endowed with an immortal soul and a free will, he has no right to interfere in the life of the animals. Yet mail violently interferes in the animal kingdom by killing them cold-bloodedly as a sport. and in cruelly butchering them and in devouring their dead bodies as food! By this unnatural practice, man allows his stomach to become the cemetery for the decomposed dead animal flesh, which is followed by all its sad consequences.

MAN: THE LAW BREAKER

Thus, man in his ignorance and weakness violates two basic laws of Nature : the one of the freedom of other beings, by using destructive force on the life of the animals, and the other law, by feeding himself on the same animal kingdom to which he belongs. The law is that each kingdom has to feed on the kingdom immediately below its own. This latter violation of the law, is called "Autophagy" or " Cannibalism," which is responsible for most of the ailments and diseases of the physical body of man, and for his cruelty, greed, and selfishness in life. Besides the toxins that flesh food produces in the human system, the coarse animal magnetism and the low vibrations of flesh interfere with the emotions, feelings, and thoughts of the meat-eater.

All our aggressive wars are the result of cruelty and brutality created in man, due to the flagrant breaking of these two basic laws of Cosmic Life: by the killing and by the unnatural feeding on the flesh of another animal of whose kingdom man forms an integral part.

Many times in Society we see persons being born deformed, sick. and suffering in various ways. A rich man suddenly loses all his property. He loses his mind. He meets with an accident. He suffers incredible calamities and misfortunes. The ignorant man calls this just " bad luck." However, the man who knows the workings of this Cosmic law of Retribution and of Cosmic adjustment. calls it "Supreme Justice", as it really is, and it serves for the preservation of life and for the workings of the law of evolution of all things and of all beings in the Universe.

The greatest sickness of which humanity suffers today is moral. Nations and peoples starve spiritually. A Spiritual death is far worse than the physical death from starvation. The people of the world today need moral rearmament instead of guns, tanks, cannons and airplanes to kill each other in a third world war.

Mahatma Gandhi, the greatest man of our time. and the Father of the Republic of India. won the independence of his great Country through moral rearmament and not by a bloody war!

For us, instead of following this proved good example, in the place of the harmonious interpretive national dances of foreign countries, we send them our Rock and Roll dance, to make the youth sexually wild and esthetically ugly. Instead of teaching them how to live naturally and keep healthy, we sell them our coca colas, Pepsi colas, our dangerous "wonder drugs," our pills, poisonous injections and filthy vaccines to cure them, following the wrong premise that one poison can counteract another poison, and a filthy vaccine can clean the polluted blood stream of man. By practising this wrong method, some of our people are writing the blackest pages of our history for the generations to come. In the place of inspired literature, we send them our moving pictures, magazines, and other publications saturated with crime and lust, which are today responsible for the International wave of juvenile delinquency, which is nothing else than a pathological condition in the boy or the girl due to wrong eating, smoking, drinking, abnormal feelings, and wrong thinking.

All violence, immorality and crime are outside symptoms of inner abnormal conditions. Juvenile delinquency will never be stopped by law or by force. as long as our present wrong social conditions exist. The whole world today needs a moral rearmament and a religious awakening in order to come back to its normal healthy and moral social conditions.

The man, the Nation or the people who abuse or misuse their social and political freedom and power will lose them. They will be taken away from them in the same way that the non-use or the abuse of a part of our body or one of our faculties leads gradually to its loss to us.

All great material social and political positions and power are temporary. They last as long as they serve a good purpose. Events do not occur by a. mere chance. They are the result of long pre-existing causes.

There is but one short step from wealth and power to poverty and enslavement. This social and political change occurred to many peoples, nations and countries in the past. According to Plato : "For our misfortunes we have to blame ourselves and not the immortal gods who send only good things to us."Nothing comes to man unless it is invited by him. In closing let me ask our distinguished friend and guest of honor. Dr. Framrose Bode, to take this message to his great Country, India, and to her good people, whose majority are vegetarians, as the ethical and spiritual contribution of their tvo vegetarian friends and brothers who form the small minority in America.

We all wish the 15th World Vegetarian Congress to be held in November in Bombay, India, a great success in the spreading of these great Truths, which only will cement the bonds of friendship of our Country, America with those of India and the other countries and peoples of the Far East, for an international understanding, friendship and for a lasting Peace.