Silvie+Maryl | Upgrading Minds, Transforming Lives

This is the concluding Part Two of HLife’s interview with Will Tuttle, author of The World Peace Diet, continued from last week’s Part One.

MC: You mention that being vegan is a starting point. What do you mean by that?
WT: People think that that’s the end – you are vegan, that’s it, you made it. The only thing you can do higher than that is to go raw. I think that is not true. When someone goes vegan, that’s actually the very beginning of transformation. For example, I’ve been a vegan already for more than 20 years, and I would get into certain conflicts with Madeleine, my wife. I would not be that cold, but she wanted to turn on the heater, and I’d say, ‘Come on, it’s not that cold, we don’t need the heater.’ Then, I realized that when she would say, ‘but I’m cold,’ even though I’ve been a vegan for 20 years, the mentality of discounting the suffering of others was still there, sort of like what we do to pigs, chicken and cows. They’re in horrible conditions but we just discount their suffering, we minimize it in our own minds, ‘oh its not that bad, they are just cows.’ And we have to able to see these patterns that have been injected into us along with eating animal foods, and we have to do the difficult inner work of pulling them out of our consciousness and really treating everyone with respect. You are respecting them as a being with their own unique qualities, and I think that’s when we begin to see veganism as a path to nonviolence, and as a spiritual journey that never ends. Veganism is basically an ongoing spiritual journey that just goes to higher and higher levels, to ultimate enlightenment, eventually to ultimate wisdom, love, compassion and awakening. That’s really what it is, the actual outer behavior of not eating animal foods anymore is a wonderful leap, but its just a tiny step. We have a long way to go after that.

SC: There is also the judgment and intolerance.
WT: I’ve seen this in the vegan movement myself quite a bit, people say, ‘well I’m vegan now and those people are not.’ There is lot of judgment and lot of violence in the way they talk about other people. Again, someone eating meat is not their fault, they are just acting out the programming of our culture. So, I think the next step now is to create a learning context for non-vegans to become vegans and vegans to become more conscious of what the spiritual path is about. Sort of a de-culturalization or psychological growth, becoming emotionally healthy and becoming a real force for positive change. Because we can be a vegan and not really be much of a force for positive change if we are frustrated, if we are judgmental and so forth. It’s really important for people to take these steps as best we can.

MC: Are you talking about subconscious thoughts that affect our behavior negatively?
WT: Yes. A lot of times it is sort of subconscious. One doesn’t really realize it consciously, but I think that going down the street as a vegan is a challenge because when the average person goes down the street and sees Burger King and McDonald’s and KFC, they don’t have a lot of negativity coming up. They are more like ‘oh, good stuff, I gotta have it.’ And the average vegan going down the same street suddenly gets very negative like, ‘Dang! I hate that Burger King! Don’t people realize this is violent? What a bunch of stupid people we have in this culture, a bunch of jerks! I hate everyone!’ So, we get triggered. But it’s really important as vegans to recognize all this violence, yet to consciously see that and understand that it is a condition that we are inheriting.

MC: It’s not about cutting out some foods and thinking that you did your part, you’re done. There’s much more to it – to cut out negative behaviors and thoughts, especially our judgments of others who are on a different path.
WT: That’s really important. I say that in the World Peace Diet, that being vegan is nothing to be proud of, we are not better than anyone else. It’s just a certain aspect of coming home to our true nature, but it is just the beginning. In fact, we have much more responsibility than ever to be kind and compassionate to other human beings, and that’s really important if we become a vegan because, if we are really concerned about animals, future generations and hungry people, than we should be someone that others would like to emulate. We should attract.

SC: Give vegan a good name.
WT: Yes, instead of repel people. So, I think we have a lot of work to do in order to grow.  I also think that the media unfairly portraits vegans a lot. I think there is a tendency for people who eat animal foods, even if we do nothing but smile at them, for them to feel judged. So, they will project onto us, ‘you are violent.’ They will naturally do that, so we have to realize that that’s happening – especially me.

SC: How long have you been vegetarian/vegan?
WT: For 35 years, and vegan for 30. In 1975, I became a vegetarian, and by 1980 I was a vegan.

MC: And how’s your health?
WT: Good, it’s really good. That’s one of the benefits. It’s really important to feel great, feel comfortable, and to be able to run, have energy. I know I can go out here and run 10 miles if I want. And I hardly ever get sick – and if I do get sick, which is never, it’s only for a day or two. I’ll have a little cleansing, but even that I like it’s just a little while. I’m never in bed for days like I see all these people get, they lose days – that just doesn’t happen with us. For 20 years, and a lot of times with three or four events a week, I’ve only missed one event.

SC: Could you talk about the link between consciousness, materialism and veganism?
WT: Yes. We have a tendency in a culture that eats a lot of meat to look at beings as matter, as just things. If you look at a being and see consciousness manifesting in a creative way – as a cow, a bear, a dog, a human – that this is an expression of a life that is greater than just a material thing, then it will be pretty hard to just stab them and confine them. If you want to see them as just walking meat, a material thing, I’ve noticed that whatever we do to animals we do to ourselves. The more we start to think of ourselves as a material system, material things that were born and will die, then we tend to look at all of Nature as just a material thing. Physics was the first science to realize that there isn’t actually any matter – it’s energy. When you try to find matter, all I can find is probability that is, in many ways, a result of the consciousness of the observer. The observer is who determines what the matter will actually be. It’s the idea of the observer effect.

SC: What we see as matter, is really consciousness.
WT: Exactly. So, we have to understand that consciousness is all, so if we want to create a world of harmony, then we have to change the consciousness. Raising consciousness is a great idea but behavior, which is a material manifestation of consciousness, affects consciousness. Consciousness affects behavior, and behavior affects consciousness, so the consciousness will never go higher than the level of the behavior. That’s why so many people in the new age movement make progress in their spiritual path up to a certain point, and then they hit this plateau and don’t really get anywhere because they haven’t changed their behavior, the violence in their food, the violence in their relationships. They are still eating the same way and it kind of keeps them stuck. The more behavior evolves, the greater compassion. That’s the goal of spiritual life, to have them both developing at the same time.