The Spiritual Side of Vegetarianism


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.



Old Testament

New Testament

Sri Isopanisad

Bhagavad Gita-As-It-Is

Hesh Goldstein






















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