Since meat or blood produce, as the reader already knows from previous sections, does not constitute the natural food for the human being, that food which must be pointed out as the right one can be found only among those substances we term "vegetarian". This means that the human being's natural food can stem only from the plant kingdom.
      Now here objections could be made and it could be emphasized that plants are also living beings and that their destruction or their use as food is just as much against the great commandment "Thou shalt not kill" as the use of meat is. And I must admit that this is really to some extent true. But, as the following will show, the plant beings are not so far advanced in evolution on the physical plane as the animals. This means that they do not have such a complex or sensitive nervous system as the animals and consequently do not experience pain in the same sense as they do. As the physical area of the plant being's consciousness still constitutes merely its "sub-consciousness", it has no day-consciousness on the physical plane and its defining of happiness and unhappiness is felt not as realistic fact but, on the contrary, at the very most as a vague feeling of pleasantness and unpleasantness. The plant is thus, unlike the animal, not at a stage in evolution where it has a completely functioning day-consciousness on the physical plane allowing the analyses of its fate, as rows of thought promoting conscious terror and anxiety, happiness and well-being, to file past its inner I. It can therefore feel its physicality only in terms of the two definitions: a vague feeling of pleasantness and a vague feeling of unpleasantness. It has admittedly a day-consciousness but, in relation to the animals', it is microscopic and, according to "Livets Bog", corresponds merely to the sixth plane of existence, namely "the kingdom of bliss". It is the divine atmosphere of this kingdom, converted into physical form, that gives the plant kingdom its array of glowing colours, beautiful smells and pleasant sounds. The plants are thus, according to the highest occult analyses, spiritual beings whose descent into darkness, the material plane or the zone of "the killing principle", is not yet so advanced that their shining halo of bliss has been covered by or shrouded in coarse physical material but still casts its divine enlivening radiance over the continents of the earth as well as under the waters thereby transforming these immense deserts into gardens for everything living.
      As the plant being is not so far advanced in physical evolution as the animal beings and does not therefore suffer as much through killing or mutilation as they do, since the plant cannot feel anxiety or terror and cannot experience pain realistically but merely in the form of a vague feeling of unpleasantness, it will be obvious that by killing animals one creates greater suffering than by killing plants. Of two evils one must choose the lesser. And in the present case it would be the lesser evil to kill plants. By choosing vegetarian food one will thus to the least extent break the fifth commandment. This choice will furthermore result in a great advantage since vegetarian food to a certain extent can be produced entirely without killing or mutilation. The vegetable area includes in its highest examples substances that are simply designed to be absorbed as nourishment in organisms. This in turn means that these substances are in such a state in Nature or are under such conditions that their absorption as nourishment in organisms means life and evolution instead of killing and mutilation. It is the emergence of these substances that will replace "the killing principle" on the earth and make it possible for the old saying "one being's death is another's bread" not to continue being valid on our planet.