"Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet."- Albert Einstein.
"If a man eats meat, he will take on the qualities of the animal he eats and once those qualities enter, the man's anger, his hastiness, and his animal qualities will increase. If he does not kill anything on the inside he will not kill anything on the outside."- Islamic Holiness M. R. Bawa Muhaiyaddeen.
"The eating of meat extinguishes the seed of great compassion."- The Buddha in Mahaparinirvana Sutra.
"One is not a great one because one defeats or harms other living beings. One is so called because one refrains from defeating or harming other living beings."- The Buddha in Dhammapada, Ch. 19 (15/270), Max Muller, Trans.
"Whosoever is kind to the creatures of God is kind to himself."- Mohammed.
"The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men."- Leonardo da Vinci.
"I do feel that spiritual progress does demand, at some stage, that we should cease to kill our fellow creatures for the satisfaction of our bodily wants."- Mahatma Gandhi.
Such words are not about justifying vegetarianism as a dogma but rather imploring to our hearts the deeper side of nutrition and it's importance in modern society.
The subject of nutrition is not simply a question of the food we eat at meals. Besides nutrients, foods contain scents, colours and invisible particles that attract pure light, light that is so essential for our joyful life and well-being. The choice we make is therefore always of consequential significance.
The difference between flesh-based and vegetarian foods lies in the amount of sunlight they contain. Fruits and vegetables are so steeped in sunlight, that one could say they are a condensed form of light. In order to develop the qualities of the heart, besides eating peacefully, one needs to eat consciously. This means bringing in the light, eating the concentrated light which contains the beautiful sounds that connect our hearts to the rhythms and invisible aspects of the Universe. This attracts the luminous properties of matter and illuminates your being, especially your thoughts and emotions, not just today, but throughout your experience of your existence on this material plane.
Your future depends on how you eat and what you eat. Your body is your temple and every action within the temple, done with conscious intention, creates a more harmonious outcome. Transcendence happens as you obtain better and more refined particles to replace that which hold the old and limiting particles which colour your experience of this ecstatic universe. The quality of your food, it's physical properties, not only transforms your emotions and mind, but can actually change your appearance and personality. Everything around us is is permeated by forces and those forces become more pure and subtle the further they reach the higher planes of light that exist here in the physical world.
This realm is of a spiritual nature, which transcends limitations and lives in the pureness of your most luminous and open qualities. The secret to opening the treasure-house of food, is the love and compassion attained within your consciousness. The treasure is the sun, condensed into particles, which we can send to all the centres in our bodies. This essential signpost of love reveals to you that at the deepest level, compassion becomes a healing power in the widest sense.
Everyone you come into contact with will be touched by your presence and affected by the healing peace that you radiate. This breaks the cycle of action and reaction. You become light in the world, a reflection of consciousness in the most pure form, illuminating unconsiousness as it dissolves in the light of your new experience. The quality of your consciousness at this very moment determines how you will experience your future. Seek to generate enough light consciousness in order to feel the heightened aliveness so that you recognise and embrace your truth from the space of pure consciousness.
Go more deeply into the source of your experience, where theory and speculation have no voice, rather, your inner experience speaks forcefully.
I see the physical body as the "temple of the soul", hence I concentrate on using various methods of cleansing and detoxification, including herbal preparations and fasting, to strengthen and purify the body. As part of this process, I suggest one follows a healthy and balanced vegetarian diet. Such a diet would exclude meat, fish, poultry, eggs and refined foods such as white sugar, white flour, deep frozen and/or processed foods.
In this way, the focus would be rather on fresh fruits and vegetables that are in season and/or are organically produced. This is a way to connect to Nature and it's rhythms and cycles so that one may be in harmony with it. I see Nature as an omnipresent guide and a reference to how human beings can live harmoniously on the planet.
I often talk about spiritual traditions and religious teachings mentioning this very important point that has been neglected or even altered throughout time.
For those of you who have a religious inclination, it would be interesting to take note that, for example, in the Bible we can read: "And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb-bearing seed which is upon the face of the Earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for food." (Genesis 1:29).
It is the first dietary law for spiritual life in the Torah/Old Testament, where there is no indication for people to eat animals. It is also one of the Ten Commandments: "Thou shall not kill" (Exodus 20:13).
In Jainism, ahimsa, the doctrine of non-violence, is a central theme. Because of this the Jains have maintained a strong and unbroken vegetarian lifestyle throughout history.
"If one offers Me with love and devotion a leaf, a flower, fruit or water, I will accept it." (Bhagavad Gita, 9.26).
Read the rest of this
Inspirations and Creative Thoughts
