Why did I initially advocate for vegetarianism, only to abandon it entirely later?
The answer to this is rather complicated. You see, there’s a very fundamental tradition in Yoga, as practical approach to religion, where people don’t actually know which one of the things they did worked, so they will make a list of every single one of them, and have students reproduce the list in their own practice, hoping some of it will work and the achievement will be reproduced as well. This sounds incredibly non-scientific for something that is often advertised as a scientific approach to spirituality, but that’s what it is, and how it worked for thousands of years. For a system that doesn’t actually know what works and why, it seems to work remarkably well. Also, the reason why the list of things one is supposed to reproduce doesn’t get smaller easily is the perceived cost of experimentation. Essentially, one would have to intentionally risk students by giving them an incomplete list of things to do, and if/when someone fails, repeat his list enough times that you can rule out chance or individual peculiarities of the person in question. Essentially, you would have to deliberately ruin people just so that you could have a more scientific discipline. Since nobody ever did this intentionally, this list of things to do and not to do if you want to be a yogi tends to be remarkably stable.
Things did get crossed out by either chance or necessity, however. For instance, one of the staples of such lists was living in an Indian jungle near a holy river in a hut of your own making. There are even instructions on how to make one in the Upanishads. If this is technically infeasible, you would have to choose between not teaching people at all, or trying to find the closest possible equivalent, which varies between “find an equally extreme form of hermitage, such as a cave in the Himalayas”, and “find a place where nobody will bother you while you practice”. Believe it or not, people tended to go with the first option for a very long time, before enough people, unfortunate enough to lack access to remote caves, had to meditate in their room, managed to get a solid pool of datapoints in, and a conclusion could be formed that not being bothered is the active compound, and holiness of the place itself can be seen as a welcome but unnecessary addition.
There are other items on the list that were considered staples – for instance, celibacy, or brahmacarya. It was assumed to be essential, until multiple married people of both sexes attained success in yoga, after which it was merely “recommended”, and not seen as an absolute requirement. Similarly, vegetarianism is a staple requirement on each and every list I’ve seen, from every single authority on Yoga and Vedanta; at least at the times when I did my initial yogic practice. It’s seen as both a moral issue and an issue of introducing impurities into the system that aggravate the process of purification of the nadis. Since impurities can cause damage to the system when the energy flow increases to the point of stretching the limits of the conduits, you can understand why this is something nobody is willing to play with much in order to understand the exact parameters. In order to learn, you’d have to sacrifice people by pushing them too hard with an impure system, causing mental and physical damage, according to all schools of energetic yoga. Sacrificing students in order to improve your scientific knowledge would be immoral, so nobody does it. However, there are cases where people are literally forced to experiment on themselves and thus establish datapoints. One such example was Milarepa, who unwittingly provided two important datapoints. The first was meditating for a long time on a diet of a nettle brew. Surprisingly, nettles proved to be nutritionally valuable beyond what one would expect, and he managed to survive on this diet for, likely, years. This caused him to lose weight and strength and eventually caused mental fatigue and failure in meditation, and he was forced to interrupt his efforts and beg for food. He was given meat, ate it, and both his health and meditative success improved instantly and greatly. This is the second datapoint – meat actually doesn’t cause problems in advanced yogic practice; in fact, it seems to help. Sure, we can be conservative and say that this proved that starting with a nettle brew and continuing until a point of mental fatigue and failure, and then transitioning to a meat diet, is what will produce the desired effects. In fact, I am not sure I would dare to argue that this line of thinking is without merit, until I see evidence of someone who was always on a meat diet and produced same or superior results.
You see how that works? In science, experimentation is what provides datapoints. In yoga, experimentation is potentially fatal, and datapoints are provided usually only when someone has no other option but to break prohibitions, and then you see what the result happened to be. Even then, you don’t actually willingly repeat it because it could be a fluke, and only when enough people do involuntary experimentation, you can get more datapoints and eventually change the approach.
This was how it worked for me. I started spiritual practice that was initially non-yogic, consisting of advanced self-hypnosis and some concepts to meditate upon. After the initial results, I had experiences that looked very much like the descriptions of impure nadis in literature, and literature from all schools was perfectly clear – no drugs, alcohol, smoking or meat. I never took drugs, stopped smoking recently and drank alcohol only infrequently, so that part was easy. Not eating meat, however, was complicated, because I thought one can’t actually survive without it, and I had to survive in order to practice yoga, so that looked like a no-go. It turned out you can survive without meat, but you can’t just remove meat from conventional Western diet and be left with enough nutrients. You have to find substitutes, so I did that. It seemed to work, so I added vegetarianism to my personal list of things you have to do in order to succeed in spiritual practice. It took me about 13 years and various health issues before I abandoned it. I still think it would be morally preferable to be vegetarian, if it were a feasible option, but in my case, the amount of strain I had to put on my system was such, that it was not. I find vegetarianism preferable in all ways but one – it didn’t work for me in the long term. So, it wasn’t a philosophical change of mind, but a purely practical one, where ligaments on my hands and feet started breaking, and I had multiple injuries in a matter of weeks, one of them permanent. This was combined with a period where I craved meat, and tried to find substitutes. Eventually, I started slowly introducing meat to my diet and the problem with the ligaments was solved, and I had a significant increase in strength and endurance, combined with absolutely no adverse spiritual or energetic symptoms.
This doesn’t mean that I would feel easy recommending beginners to ignore the traditional and scriptural requirement of vegetarianism. I know what worked based on what I did. Advising someone to do something else would feel risky. I am pretty sure eating meat has nothing to do with impurity of the nadis, now, after decades of experience. For the most part, I think it’s about physical body’s slow adaptation to high spiritual states. I would absolutely advise against anything psychoactive, though. First of all, it will interfere with yogic practice, and second, it will be much harder to figure out a point where yoga is starting to become effective, and it’s a very sensitive thing initially.
So, I can positively say that meat is not a problem, while vegetarianism might either help, or get in the way, but only in the long term. Basically, it’s safe to go vegetarian for a few years and then gradually switch to meat. I see no harm in that. As for sex, of course whoring around would be spiritually detrimental and I strongly advise against it. Celibacy, however, isn’t of any good use spiritually, and is merely another set of problems that need to be managed. It doesn’t help in any way. Having a spiritually compatible sexual partner is ideal.
If vegetarianism and celibacy are of no use, what are actually the dangers in spiritual practice, that I am aware of?
Yes, those exist. They are actually described in scriptures and tradition. Interacting with worldly people messes up your concentration and is harmful. You need to reset yourself after every such interaction, and if you don’t, interference builds up to the point where you get so overwhelmed you can no longer practice yoga correctly. Radio, TV, Internet – those are all sources of interference. They are sources of useful information as well, so one would be poorly advised to cut them off entirely, but if you’re not cautious, you get overwhelmed easily. Books written by idiot authors are also harmful, because your mind gets saturated with bad ideas, and you need to purge such influence afterwards by exposing yourself to good things and good ideas before you can properly proceed with sadhana. If something is predictably harmful and you know you’ll have to repair the damage afterwards, it might be better to eschew the problem altogether. Yoga is a process of spiritual purification. You theoretically can alternate between spiritual purification and messing yourself up with stupid garbage online, but one would be justified in asking what exactly is the point of this exercise then. When you can reliably tell that something is harmful to your practice, and it is something you can eliminate, it would be wise to do so. Some things you can’t eliminate, unfortunately. Electromagnetic radiation, pesticides in food, all sorts of stuff in water and air – those, unfortunately, are a given. Also, getting sick will mess you up, and if you have a flu, you won’t be able to practice yoga until you’ve healed. It is what it is. However, adding TikTok to the list is inherently unhelpful. It’s enough that most of us had to live in polluted and noisy cities, and surrounded by unhelpful people. Overcoming those obstacles is hard enough. Introducing unnecessary ones might just be that one straw that makes the difference between success and failure. So, you can understand why I was extremely reluctant to deviate from the course recommended by scriptures and tradition in any way. In some cases, you just can’t help it – if tradition says you need to meditate in Himalayas near the source of Ganga, tough luck, because that’s simply inaccessible. You can understand the general intent of the instruction – find some good spot in nature far from human interference. Some improvisation is required. Also, when I personally found out that some traditional instructions are wrong, I omitted them. I was usually so reluctant to do so, it took me years or even decades to be completely sure, and I would not do so unless I had at least some kind of confirmation from above. Traditions are there because they worked, or at least people thought they worked, and for a long time. I’m not messing with that unless I understand exactly what’s going on and why. Since that’s very hard, I’m usually just not messing with it until absolutely forced to do so.
So, what turned out to be reliably dangerous? For the most part, ego trip that comes with success in spiritual practice that beginners experience. That will mess you up like nothing else. Also, not instantly obeying the guru and instead waiting until you figure it out yourself, because you don’t want to be a blind follower. That’s insanely harmful, because this kind of knowledge comes at the end of things, and is reliably unavailable before that. For a beginner, the expectation that he is to figure out the reason for the command before obeying it is as foolish as it is harmful. If the problem is big enough that your guru resorts to orders, it’s usually immediate and grave and needs to be acted upon instantly. Sometimes you will figure it out immediately after you obey the command, and you’ll see what that was all about, and sometimes you will understand it after multiple decades. The likelihood that you will ever figure it out unless you obey the command is negligible. You absolutely need to be a blind follower. After you do enough blind following and have enough “aha!” moments of understanding what that was about, you will gain independent expertise. No blind following, no expertise. Also, the reason why one would object to being a blind follower is typically insecurity, or some other Western ego trip about emancipation and similar bullshit. Even at this point, if God tells me to do something, I will first do it and then ask what that was all about. It’s probably the most important thing for one to learn, because failure to do so causes the greatest number of fatal errors one can make. I had situations where someone ordered me to suddenly stop in the middle of the road. I did. Seconds later a cistern truck came speeding through the bend, completely on my side of the road. Had I not stopped, it would have killed me. It’s merely one example, and I had loads of them, and only occasionally did I have a luxury of finding out why the order was issued. Mostly, I just survived and went on, not even knowing what I missed. So, obey first, ask questions later.
Another cause of failure is the assumption that problems are a sign you’re doing something wrong. That’s kind of a hard one, because sometimes they are, and sometimes they are not. Sometimes you are causing problems, and sometimes the Devil is causing you problems because he wants you to stop doing whatever you are doing, because it’s working. You need to develop the wisdom necessary to tell which is which, and I can’t help you there.
Paying attention to other people, and not your guru and the scriptures, can also be very harmful. Everybody has opinions, and they will share them with you. Knowing which part of that you can safely ignore, and which part you should pay attention to, is what wisdom is about. Of course you can’t just ignore what people are telling you, because odds are, you will sometimes act foolishly in ways that most people can warn you about. However, sometimes you will only appear to act foolishly, because you know something they don’t. Having enough confidence to discern between the two, and listen to people when they are right and completely ignore them when they don’t know what they are talking about, is a learned wisdom. You will make mistakes. Be sure to learn from them quickly enough and try not to repeat the same ones, because you don’t actually have all the time in the world, and some fuckups can’t be undone.
So, yeah, that’s about it.
