The Spiritual Side of Vegetarianism

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What you are about to read will literally blow your mind as it did mine when I first became aware of it. There are various scriptural quotes that put this all into perspective.

In Genesis 1:30, God says,
“And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground–everything that has the breath of life in it–I give every green plant for food. And it was so.”

In Daniel 1:8, it says,

“But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king’s meat, nor wine, which he drank; therefore, he requested of the prince of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself”.

In the Bhagavad-Gita-As-It-Is, God said,

“If one offers Me with love and devotion, a leaf, a flower, fruit or water, I will accept it”

The Sixth Commandment says.

“Thou Shalt Not Kill”

I’ll get to the essence of that down the road. First, I need to put some very essential info into perspective.

We all see ourselves as being creatures of reason and well above the lowly beasts. Yet, when we apply our reason to unlocking the secrets of nature for our benefit, we sink deeper and deeper into a quagmire of endless problems.

Our internal combustion engine gets us where we’re going faster, but also results in choking air pollution, the greenhouse effect, and a dangerous dependence on oil.  When we harness the atom we get cheap energy, weapons of mass destruction, Chernobyl, and lots of dangerous radioactive waste. Then, modern business produces an avalanche of food in the supermarkets, the death of the family farm, the pollution of ground water, the loss of topsoil, the organized demolition of the World Trade Center, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

What is evident is that we are missing something in out attempts to control the laws of nature for our own purposes.  The “something”, as defined in various scriptures and is clearly defined in the very first truth in the ancient Sri Isopanisad, says;

 “Everything in this creation is owned and controlled by the Lord (God). One should therefore accept only those things necessary for himself, which are set aside as his quota, and one should not accept other things, knowing well to whom they belong.”

In nature we see this principal at work. Nature’s arrangement, set up by God, maintains the birds and the beasts. The elephant eats his fifty pounds or so a day and the ant his few grains. If man does not interfere, the natural balance sustains all creatures.

What’s bizarre is that the earth can produce enough food to feed ten times the human population. But, political bullshit and wars, unfair raping of the land, the production of cash crops like GMOs, tobacco, tea, and coffee instead of food, and erosion due to misuse make sure that millions go hungry, even in the rich, good ol’ U S of A.

What we totally fail to understand and put into proper perspective, is God’s viewpoint. He created the laws in the first place. In His eyes, all the inhabitants, be it creatures of the land, water or air, are all His children.

Yet we, the humans, and the most advanced, treat our other relatives with great cruelty. We relish on the practice of animal slaughter all the way to the destruction of the rain forests, and yet we wonder why we suffer from the unending series of natural disasters, wars, epidemics, famines, and whatever.

The cause of the problem is our endless desire for sense gratification, caring little for anyone else’s rights and enviousness. We understand that every child has the right to share the wealth of his father, but we do not even see for a second the brotherhood of all creatures on earth depending upon our understanding the universal fatherhood of God.

So, if God owns and controls His entire creation, what is our position? To serve Him in some way! How does that manifest and why do we misuse our alleged independence? We are ignorant of the truth!

The body of every creature is like a car. It cannot move without a driver.

And who would the driver be? The eternal spirit soul and not the temporary material body.

So, if you are born in America, you are an “American”. If you are born in Africa, you are an “African”. We relate to each other and identify everyone by their sex, race, creed, social status, and never by who we all really are, the spiritual, eternal soul.

When human activity is devoid of service to God, it is governed by the Law of Karma. Every action has a reaction. Do good, get good. Do bad, get bad. So, if I cause pain to another living being or participate in the pain caused to another living being, it comes back to me in this lifetime or the next. Don’t think if just when you are about to leave your body and you shoot your envious neighbor, you are not gonna pay a price. You do, and it’s called reincarnation. If payback does not occur in this lifetime, it happens next time around.

Let me put is in a better perspective. When I was a lifeguard at a swim club in my teen years, there were two twin sisters at the swim club. One was drop dead gorgeous and the other was drop dead ugly. Their previous lives determined that.

Unfortunately, people are clueless of these things and simply waste their time. Basically, people are living like animals. “What works for me is all that matters”. The human form has the responsibility to live in a different way. There are 8,400,000 species of life in the world and this is documented in scripture. So, if there are 8,400,000 different types of life forms and only a bit over 9 million humans, once you screw up and go down, think how long it’s gonna be before you see a human form again. The human has two options: continue in a human form next time around or go back to the other 8,399,999 species. The human form is the only form from which you, the spirit soul, can go back to the spiritual planets and world. How that option manifests, is coming.

Now, back to the beginning. We know that every action has a reaction. And we know that vegetarians that eat plant based foods and are killing those plant based foods as well. Maybe not to the degree of flesh eaters, but still engaging in killing.

In the beginning versus, there are quotes from various scriptures about only eating plant based foods. The third quote is the most potent. Offer it to God before you take a bite, with love, and He will accept the food and remove the karma. Eat animals and you will never see a human form for lifetimes because God is against that, but your tongue is not.

God has millions of names. Some are Allah, Eloi, Eluhanu, Abbah, Krishna, Govinda, Gopala, and on and on and on. Find the one that you like (they relate to different aspects of His personality), and offer the plant based food you eat to Him using His name. Every meal, every snack, every grain, seed, fruit, nut, etc. All can be offered after they are prepared and ready to be eaten. If He will only accept plant based foods, why would you want to eat anything else?

What it does is to strengthen your relationship with Him. Then, what about your actions? Do you think being a pimp, a criminal, a degenerate would be pleasing to Him? I don’t think so. If all actions have reactions, then doing what’s pleasing to Him and not your senses, is of the essence.

So, the modern civilization is very risky. One may feel comfortable as a successful businessman or politician, or one may think oneself comfortable because of being born in a rich family, or one may be a humble janitor, but these statuses of life are temporary. They will have to change and we do not know what kind of miseries we will have to suffer in our next life because of our sinful activities nor in what body we will be in.

So, if one does not begin cultivating transcendental knowledge, then one’s life is very risky. Suppose a healthy man is living in a contaminated place. Is his life and health not at risk? He may be infected by disease at any moment. So, we must work to dissipate our ignorance through the cultivation of transcendental, spiritual knowledge.

In conditioned life we are committing sins at every step, even without knowing it. The reason we are sinning unknowingly is because we have been in ignorance from our very birth and this ignorance is prominent despite so many educational institutions. Why? Because despite of so many big learning institutions, none of them are teaching the science of the soul, thereby keeping us all in ignorance, and helping us continue to sin and suffer the reactions.

If one does not come to the platform of self-realization, this crime will continue in all these universities and institutions imparting the same ignorance and stupidity.

Unless one comes to the point of asking, “Who am I? Who is God? What is the purpose of living in this world? What is my relationship with God and this world?” and finds proper answers, one is no better than an animal subjected to transmigration from one body to another in different species of life. This is the end result of ignorance.

If you meditate, chant His names quietly or loudly, you slowly develop a relationship with Him. A nice simple mantra is: Gopala Govinda Rama Madana Mohana. In essence it means, “please help and protect me lord.”

In closing, let me put flesh eating in its proper perspective.  Besides being conditioned from infancy and being subjected to social and advertising pressure, the main reason that hooks people on animal foods is taste. One thing is clear though, we cannot stomach eating flesh in its normal state, especially if it’s soaked in blood, even if its cooked.

Bear in mind that an animal has to be alive when its throat is slit so its heart, which is still pumping, can pump blood out of their bodies and dry their flesh. If this did not happen the flesh would be so drenched with blood that no one would want to eat it. Even so, the flesh is loaded with waste products and urea.

It is the urea trapped in the flesh that, when cooked, makes your mouth water, your vampire tendencies manifest, and five stars go to a “classy” restaurant. But, that’s not enough. The more we can disguise and hide the waste product flavor, the more we like it.

We cook flesh and eggs and add salt, pepper, MSG loaded seasonings, and all kinds of taste enhancers. If we ate cooked animals milk, aka, cheese, without adding salt, we would probably gag. To make cream and milk more appealing, we add flavorings, fruits and sugars and turn it into ice cream and flavored yogurt. We take a flesh patty and bury it with salt, lettuce, tomatoes, onion, cucumber, ketchup, mayonnaise and mustard.

The question that must be asked is, are we enjoying the taste of this rotting piece of flesh that we have been conditioned to salivate over, or is it all the plant-based sauces, seasonings, condiments, and dressings that camouflage it? Even as kids, we are buried in Big Mac propaganda telling us that all these hamburgers came from “hamburger patches”.

But, when cooked and disguised, animal flesh, eggs, and milk products all have one thing in common: they are high in saturated fat. Despite this, we easily develop cravings for these fatty, creamy, greasy food, which tend to satisfy our taste cravings.

Surely, plant foods can be prepared in fatty, creamy ways as well, without the toxic cholesterol. But, the cooked fat and urea combination cannot be duplicated by plant foods. There is one interesting catch: people who switch to a plant-based diet and stay on it for six months to a year, find nothing attractive about the taste and texture of animal foods and find them increasingly revolting.

What’s even more interesting is that our taste cells change about every three weeks. That’s basically all it takes to forget the taste of animal foods, which are conditioned and maintained by repetition, to disappear.

Eliminating our former diet high in animal fat, animal protein, frees us from that which was so toxic to our bodies, minds and disposition and gives us a more peaceful and compassionate outlook.

What I have experienced with such a change over the past 44 years is an increased appreciation for the various flavors connected with the wide assortment of plant-based foods. After all, flesh and blood is nothing more and nothing less. It is simply, flesh and blood.

Another important reality to consider is that the nature of a dead body is to rot. Whether that body is on the street, in the woods, in the water, or in your body, it is still rotting. When we consume any type of rotting flesh it takes about seven days to pass through our bodies. That being the case, where does all the rotting poisons go? And we wonder why we get sick and are plagued by debilitating diseases.

Summary: Eating flesh foods puts you in the same karmic chain as those that raise animals for slaughter or kill them. The soul, when the body dies, goes to much lower forms for generations. When you offer plant based foods to God or even a flower before you smell it, the soul will pick up where it left off in another human form in its next life.

And that my friends, is the spiritual side of vegetarianism.

Namaste!

Sources:

Old Testament

New Testament

Sri Isopanisad

Bhagavad Gita-As-It-Is 

www.asanediet.com

Hesh Goldstein
When I was a kid, if I were told that I'd be writing a book about diet and nutrition when I was older, let alone having been doing a health related radio show for over 36 years, I would've thought that whoever told me that was out of their mind. Living in Newark, New Jersey, my parents and I consumed anything and everything that had a face or a mother except for dead, rotting, pig bodies, although we did eat bacon (as if all the other decomposing flesh bodies were somehow miraculously clean). Going through high school and college it was no different. In fact, my dietary change did not come until I was in my 30's.

Just to put things in perspective, after I graduated from Weequahic High School and before going to Seton Hall University, I had a part-time job working for a butcher. I was the delivery guy and occasionally had to go to the slaughterhouse to pick up products for the store. Needless to say, I had no consciousness nor awareness, as change never came then despite the horrors I witnessed on an almost daily basis.

After graduating with a degree in accounting from Seton Hall, I eventually got married and moved to a town called Livingston. Livingston was basically a yuppie community where everyone was judged by the neighborhood they lived in and their income. To say it was a "plastic" community would be an understatement.

Livingston and the shallowness finally got to me. I told my wife I was fed up and wanted to move. She made it clear she had to be near her friends and New York City. I finally got my act together and split for Colorado.

I was living with a lady in Aspen at the end of 1974, when one day she said, " let's become vegetarians". I have no idea what possessed me to say it, but I said, "okay"! At that point I went to the freezer and took out about $100 worth of frozen, dead body parts and gave them to a welfare mother who lived behind us. Well, everything was great for about a week or so, and then the chick split with another guy.

So here I was, a vegetarian for a couple weeks, not really knowing what to do, how to cook, or basically how to prepare anything. For about a month, I was getting by on carrot sticks, celery sticks, and yogurt. Fortunately, when I went vegan in 1990, it was a simple and natural progression. Anyway, as I walked around Aspen town, I noticed a little vegetarian restaurant called, "The Little Kitchen".

Let me back up just a little bit. It was April of 1975, the snow was melting and the runoff of Ajax Mountain filled the streets full of knee-deep mud. Now, Aspen was great to ski in, but was a bummer to walk in when the snow was melting.

I was ready to call it quits and I needed a warmer place. I'll elaborate on that in a minute.

But right now, back to "The Little Kitchen". Knowing that I was going to leave Aspen and basically a new vegetarian, I needed help. So, I cruised into the restaurant and told them my plight and asked them if they would teach me how to cook. I told them in return I would wash dishes and empty their trash. They then asked me what I did for a living and I told them I was an accountant.

The owner said to me, "Let's make a deal. You do our tax return and we'll feed you as well". So for the next couple of weeks I was doing their tax return, washing their dishes, emptying the trash, and learning as much as I could.

But, like I said, the mud was getting to me. So I picked up a travel book written by a guy named Foder. The name of the book was, "Hawaii". Looking through the book I noticed that in Lahaina, on Maui, there was a little vegetarian restaurant called," Mr. Natural's". I decided right then and there that I would go to Lahaina and work at "Mr. Natural's." To make a long story short, that's exactly what happened.

So, I'm working at "Mr. Natural's" and learning everything I can about my new dietary lifestyle - it was great. Every afternoon we would close for lunch at about 1 PM and go to the Sheraton Hotel in Ka'anapali and play volleyball, while somebody stayed behind to prepare dinner.

Since I was the new guy, and didn't really know how to cook, I never thought that I would be asked to stay behind to cook dinner. Well, one afternoon, that's exactly what happened; it was my turn. That posed a problem for me because I was at the point where I finally knew how to boil water.

I was desperate, clueless and basically up the creek without a paddle. Fortunately, there was a friend of mine sitting in the gazebo at the restaurant and I asked him if he knew how to cook. He said the only thing he knew how to cook was enchiladas. He said that his enchiladas were bean-less and dairy-less. I told him that I had no idea what an enchilada was or what he was talking about, but I needed him to show me because it was my turn to do the evening meal.

Well, the guys came back from playing volleyball and I'm asked what was for dinner. I told them enchiladas; the owner wasn't thrilled. I told him that mine were bean-less and dairy-less. When he tried the enchilada he said it was incredible. Being the humble guy that I was, I smiled and said, "You expected anything less"? It apparently was so good that it was the only item on the menu that we served twice a week. In fact, after about a week, we were selling five dozen every night we had them on the menu and people would walk around Lahaina broadcasting, 'enchilada's at "Natural's" tonight'. I never had to cook anything else.

A year later the restaurant closed, and somehow I gravitated to a little health food store in Wailuku. I never told anyone I was an accountant and basically relegated myself to being the truck driver. The guys who were running the health food store had friends in similar businesses and farms on many of the islands. I told them that if they could organize and form one company they could probably lock in the State. That's when they found out I was an accountant and "Down to Earth" was born. "Down to Earth" became the largest natural food store chain in the islands, and I was their Chief Financial Officer and co-manager of their biggest store for 13 years.

In 1981, I started to do a weekly radio show to try and expose people to a vegetarian diet and get them away from killing innocent creatures. I still do that show today. I pay for my own airtime and have no sponsors to not compromise my honesty. One bit of a hassle was the fact that I was forced to get a Masters Degree in Nutrition to shut up all the MD's that would call in asking for my credentials.

My doing this radio show enabled me, through endless research, to see the corruption that existed within the big food industries, the big pharmaceutical companies, the biotech industries and the government agencies. This information, unconscionable as it is, enabled me to realize how broken our health system is. This will be covered more in depth in the Introduction and throughout the book and when you finish the book you will see this clearly and it will hopefully inspire you to make changes.

I left Down to Earth in 1989, got nationally certified as a sports injury massage therapist and started traveling the world with a bunch of guys that were making a martial arts movie. After doing that for about four years I finally made it back to Honolulu and got a job as a massage therapist at the Honolulu Club, one of Hawaii's premier fitness clubs. It was there I met the love of my life who I have been with since 1998. She made me an offer I couldn't refuse. She said," If you want to be with me you've got to stop working on naked women". So, I went back into accounting and was the Chief Financial Officer of a large construction company for many years.

Going back to my Newark days when I was an infant, I had no idea what a "chicken" or "egg" or "fish" or "pig" or "cow" was. My dietary blueprint was thrust upon me by my parents as theirs was thrust upon them by their parents. It was by the grace of God that I was able to put things in their proper perspective and improve my health and elevate my consciousness.

The road that I started walking down in 1975 has finally led me to the point of writing my book, “A Sane Diet For An Insane World”. Hopefully, the information contained herein will be enlightening, motivating, and inspiring to encourage you to make different choices. Doing what we do out of conditioning is not always the best course to follow. I am hoping that by the grace of the many friends and personalities I have encountered along my path, you will have a better perspective of what road is the best road for you to travel on, not only for your health but your consciousness as well.

Last but not least: after being vaccinated as a kid I developed asthma, which plagued me all of my life. In 2007 I got exposed to the organic sulfur crystals, which got rid of my asthma in 3 days and has not come back in over 10 years. That, being the tip of the iceberg, has helped people reverse stage 4 cancers, autism, joint pain, blood pressure problems, migraine headaches, erectile dysfunction, gingivitis, and more. Also, because of the detoxification effects by the release of oxygen that permeates and heals all the cells in the body, it removes parasites, radiation, fluoride, free radicals, and all the other crap that is thrust upon us in the environment by Big Business.

For more, please view www.healthtalkhawaii.com and www.asanediet.com.

Namaste!