Transpersonal reasons for going vegan

Michael Daw, Doctoral Researcher, University of Northampton

Take a look across the web and you will find many reasons to go vegan. For example, The Vegan Society lists four reasons, encouraging individuals to practice veganism for the benefit of animals, personal health, the environment, and other people. The animal charity PETA offers ten reasons to go vegan. They include, at number eight, “All the Cool Kids Are Doing It”, and at number nine, “Look Sexy and Be Sexy”, apparently because vegans have greater energy that is “perfect for late-night romps with your special someone”.

These myriad reasons usually boil down to three broad motivations – ethics (‘do it for the animals’), health (‘do it for yourself’), and the environment (‘do it for the world’). But might there be a fourth consideration? Some have suggested that abstaining from meat and dairy may be conducive to deeper spirituality and perhaps even support the development of supposed ‘psychic’ powers. This transpersonal motivation is less often highlighted by those pitching veganism to our modern, scientifically-oriented, and arguably more secular sensibilities.

Shamanism is probably the earliest form of spiritual tradition with a history spanning tens of thousands of years. It can be found across almost every region of the world in nomadic, hunting and gathering societies.[1] Some shamans practising today avoid meat and fish because they believe it can blunt supposed powers such as healing, control of the weather, or the ability for their minds to explore beyond the body.[2]

Vegetarianism has been particularly prominent in Indian philosophy, and sacred texts have suggested that psychic-like powers, known as siddhis, can accompany a spiritual path. As Dean Radin puts it:

Yogic wisdom describes many variations of the siddhis. Today we’d associate the elementary siddhis with garden-variety psychic phenomena. They include telepathy (mind-to-mind communication), clairvoyance (gaining information about distant or hidden objects beyond the reach of the ordinary senses), precognition (clairvoyance through time), and psychokinesis (direct influence of matter by mind).[3]

Certain devout Hindus believe that a strict vegetarian diet is important to lay the groundwork for manifesting these siddhis.[4]

In Ancient Greece, Apollonius of Tyana was said to be able to levitate his body, foresee the future, and perform healing[5] due in part to his vegetarian diet of bread, dried fruits, vegetables, and wild herbs which kept his senses in a “kind of indescribable celestial clearness”.[6] In addition to discovering many of the foundations of modern mathematics, Pythagoras was also known for mysticism and, it is claimed, was able to walk on water and be in two places at once.[7] His name was once a synonym for vegetarianism, which was based on his belief that animals and humans could reincarnate into each other and so “to kill and eat any living creatures … was to murder one’s cousins and eat their flesh.”[8]

More recently, advocates for vegetarianism in support of spiritual and psychic development include mystical traditions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries such as Theosophy and Anthroposophy (founded by the hugely influential Rudolf Steiner) that were inspired by the upsurge in interest in Spiritualist mediums who could apparently communicate with departed souls.[9]

Despite this history of associating vegetarianism with supernormal powers through spiritual and religious traditions and through those writing about psychic development,[10] the current prevailing Western culture tends to view psychic abilities as mere superstition and out of step with our supposedly more enlightened times. Those who claim that psychic abilities might actually exist get a rough reception from certain prominent scientists like Brian Cox and Richard Dawkins even though understanding human experience is far from their area of expertise. Comedians such as Dara Ó Briain and Ricky Gervais have been known to employ derogatory labels such as ‘woo’ for these purported phenomena. However, regardless of this sometimes hostile environment, over 35% of adults in the UK claim to have had at least one experience that might be thought of as ‘paranormal’[11] and a recent comprehensive review of the science of psychic abilities, published in the flagship journal of the American Psychological Association, concluded that there is strong evidence supporting the contention that psychic abilities are real and have been shown to manifest highly significant results in tightly-controlled laboratory experiments.[12]

But can going vegan really make you more psychic? Just as diet is vital for elite athletes to attain peak performance, it may also be important to hone psychic abilities. My research has shown that some ‘professional psychics’, such as mediums and those teaching psychic development, believe that forgoing meat and dairy leads to greater mental clarity which can be employed for psychic abilities. One participant I interviewed describes her vegan diet as ‘psychic-specific nutrition’. Eventually, I hope to test whether this potential effect can be measured through experimental work and therefore perhaps provide an empirical basis for yet another reason to go vegan.