Denise
Moderator

Now, this is intended towards those whom have decided to eat plants and botanical lifeforms for certain "spiritual" purposes, or "moral ethics" etc. As in those whom believe, that eating botanical food is spiritually better than eating any other form of life, and that they will get better "karma" and so on for doing this.
These people are, generally, opposed to any form of eating animals, calling it cruel and horrible and claiming it to be a threat to ones spiritual development and, "karmic points" so to speak.
Now what they seem to completely ignore, and miss out on, is the very fact that every form of plantlife, botanical lifefroms, that they themselves consume, are STILL that very thing - LIFEFORMS. Not only Lifeforms, but highly conscious beings, their own form of entities. These too have feeligns, emotions, consciousness, awarness, and in fact can be said to often be MORE spiritually developed than most other forms of life.
Scientific research have even proven how conscious and alert plants really are, and in fact shown them to be highly empathic, telepathic, and intelligent. This has been verified by in fact rather highly profiled scientists, some studies in this field done by Cleve Backster, working along with scientist-Astronauts such as Dr. Brian O'Leary and Dr. Edgar Mitchell.
Cleve Backster was Director of the Keeler Polygraph Institute and worked for the CIA on interrogation tactics. In 1966 he attached a plant to a polygraph. The polygraph recording pen moved rapidly to the top of the chart when Cleve’s thought and intention was "to burn the leaf." As a result of this intriguing response, Cleve became obsessed with a desire to understand the cellular communication process which he called primary perception. He found out that plants are highly sensitive and psyhcic, conscious beings. Plants would be highly stressed and show signs of anxiousness and fear when any form of negative action were either directly done to them, or even when just THOUGHT of being done to them. Likewise, positive actions made the plants respond with what one could only call joy, happyness, comfort, security and relaxed emotions. Other plants in the area would also react, when something was intended to be done or actually done on any other plant nearby, showing their telepathic contact with eachother.
Then you have these other experiments people have done, from talking nice to their plants and giving them love and that apparently makes them healthier and grow better, while negative energies seem to make them more miserable. Again clearly showing them to be highly spiritually developed, conscious and understanding what is going on around them. Advanced lifeforms, in other words.
All LIFE is really EQUAL. It does NOT make a difference if you eat a plant, an animal, or an insect. They are all worthy the same respect and same treatments of kindness.
So dear Vegans, eating a plant is no better than eating a cow or any other animal. You still harm and perform a negative actions towards a brilliant lifeform.
We live in a world where we all depend on survival by eating other forms of Life, no matter how you want to twist and bend that fact, it remains a fact. This is natural, and all animals and plantlifes and other lifeforms do the very same thing themselves, and I'm sure you will not say a Lion will get "bad karma" for eating a zebra, and indeed for the Lion its only way of survival is to eat other animals and meat.
So, that does mean that being a vegan serves no real spiritual purpose of all, except for a false belief in such which may be mentally comforting, but if you know the facts and truth about the botanical Life as well, perhaps you will see things in a new perspective.
Thus ending this, I would like to point out that we still should respect all forms of live, whether animals or plants or other forms, and treat them as our equals, and not abuse them or kill any forms of life unless strictly for survival and to obtain our food.
Blessings,
-Maggador
Some references of interest:
Dr Clive Backsters research: http://www.primaryperception.com/bio/?page_id=7
Dr. Edgar Mitchell, at his Institute of Noetic Sciences: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institu...oetic_Sciences