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- The Occult Law of Sacrifice had done it. For centuries together they used to sacrifice animals to the degraded and blood-thirsty intelligences or to an angry God. An arrogant priesthood, desirous of eating animal food and drinking intoxicating liquors, which they could not do under the established humane custom of protecting animals, is capable of misinterpreting and murdering the sacred Truth, sacrifice the interests of poor, dumb creatures so that their depraved palates may be satisfied. The priesthood always opposes the spread of knowledge and is the foremost advocate of caste. The low class man - the Shudra - cannot, in his opinion, even hear the sacred word; his very shadow pollutes the Brahmin.
If there are Brahmins in India advocating caste and opposing the spread of education, there are Brahmins in other countries, too, that play the same part in civilization or in retarding civilization. Your modern Christianity that emphasizes the literal interpretation of vicarious atonement would be worse than the Brahmin system of sacrificing animals. Salvation consists in bringing out the immortal and Higher Self of man, which self, being within him, must be unfolded through his own exertions. Our lower nature, our faults and sins have to be worked out by ourselves, and the death of one individual cannot remove the sins of the rest; if it can, where, is the necessity of living a righteous life so much emphasized by Jesus? Every man is the maker of his destiny and he must bring about his own salvation.
There was another reason for introducing the system of animal sacrifices. There are powerful intelligences of a low order living in different regions of the universe and they are fed and nourished with low, vicious emanations going out from men, animals, impure food, etc. Oblations of blood, flesh and spirituous liquors are offered to propitiate those intelligences in practices of black magic. They may for a time help the performers of such sacrifices, but ultimately enslave them.
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