Osho on vegetarianism

The modern mind is much easier to understand this, because now we know that all life forms are interconnected and interdependent. Man - not an island: one lives in an endless web of millions of forms of life and existence. We live in a circuit, we are not separate. And kill other animals is not only ugly, unaesthetic, inhumane - it is also unscientific. We are destroying our own foundation.

Life exists as an organic unity. Man can only exist as part of the orchestra. Just imagine a person with no birds, no animals and no fish - such a life would be very, very sad, it will lose all the complexity, diversity, richness and color. Forests completely empty, not a voice of the cuckoo bird will not fly, and the water seems very sad without fish.

And behind it is something very scientific. Not by chance that all religions born in India, is based on vegetarianism, and all religions born outside India, do not contain a vegetarian. But the highest peaks of the religious consciousness were known only in India and elsewhere.

Vegetarianism acts as a cleansing. When you eat animals, you no longer under the law required. You become severe, you are more attracted to the ground. If you are a vegetarian, you are light, do you belong to the law of grace, law, power, and you begin to draw the sky.

Your food - not just food: it's you. You become what you eat. If you eat something that is basically rooted in the murder, rape, you can not rise above the law of necessity. To a greater or lesser degree, you will be animals. Man is born, when you start to rise above the animals when you start doing something for yourself is that it can not do any animal.

Vegetarianism - a conscious effort, a deliberate effort to get rid of gravity, which binds you to the ground, so you can fly - to make it possible to fly from a single common. The lighter the food, the deeper meditation. Denser than the food, the more and more difficult it becomes meditation. I'm not saying that non-vegetarians meditation is impossible - it is possible, but it is too difficult.

It's like the man who rises to the mountain, and all the time is a lot of rocks. Perhaps even carrying stones, you can reach the top of the mountain, but it creates unnecessary complexity. You could throw the stones, you could relieve yourself and your progress could be an easier, more pleasant. Reasonable person would suffer rocks, climbing up the hill, do not suffer unnecessarily. And the higher it will go up, the easier and easier it will become. Even if he was carrying something, he gave it up. Hidlari when Edmund and Tenzing climbed Everest for the first time, they had to give up all the way - because the higher they go, the harder it was something to wear. They threw even the most significant. Carry themselves more than enough.

Vegetarianism - a huge help. It changes your chemistry. When you eat and live off animals ... First, when an animal is killed, it's angry, afraid - naturally. When you kill an animal ... just imagine that kill you. What will be your state of mind? What will happen to your psychology? In your body will direct all kinds of poisons, because when you are angry, your blood goes a certain poison. When you are afraid, your blood again flows poison another. And when you die, it is a limiting fear, anger. All the glands of your body release all their venom.

A man continues to live on this poisoned meat. Not surprisingly, if you remain angry, violent, aggressive, and this is natural. If you live by killing, you do not respect life, you are hostile to life. A person who is at enmity with life, can not go into a prayer - because prayer means reverence for life.

And those who are hostile to God's creatures, can also be very friendly to God. If you destroy a Picasso painting, you can not be very respectful of Picasso - it's impossible. All creatures belong to God. God lives in them. God breathed into them - they are its manifestations, in the same way as you do. They - brothers and sisters.

If you look at the animals, and you do not have a thought about the brotherhood - you do not know what prayer is, you never know what prayer is. And the very idea that just for the food, just to eat, you can destroy life, so ugly. It is impossible to believe that a man just keeps doing it.

Pythagoras vegetarianism first brought to the West. This is - the deep wisdom for man: to learn how to live in peace with nature, in peace with creation. This becomes the foundation. Only on this basis can establish his prayer, his meditative. You can see it in yourself, when you eat meat, meditation will be more and more difficult.

Buddha was born in a non-vegetarian family. He was a ksatriya - belonged to militant caste - but the experience of meditation gradually turn it into a vegetarian. It was his inner understanding, when he ate meat, it was more difficult to meditate, when he avoided meat, meditation was easier. It was a simple observation.

You will be surprised to know that the greatest in the world were vegetarians Jains - but all of their twenty-four masters were born in non-vegetarian families. All of them were soldiers, they were brought up as soldiers. All twenty-four Jain masters were Kshatriyas.

What happened? Why do these people who were raised, taught from the beginning to eat meat, have created one great vegetarian movement in the world? Only because of his experiments with meditation.

We can not ignore the fact that if you want to meditate, if you want to get rid of thoughts, if you want to be easy - so easy that the land will not weigh you down, so light, that you begin to levitate, so light that you open sky - then you have to turn off non-vegetarian according to the freedom of vegetarianism.

Vegetarianism has nothing to do with religion at its core is something scientific. It has nothing to do with morality, but he has a lot to do with aesthetics. It is impossible to believe that a sensitive, conscientious, intelligent, loving person can eat meat. And if he eats meat, then something is missing - he's still out does not realize that he does not understand the value of their actions.

Pythagoras but not heard, did not believe him - on the contrary, he was ridiculed, persecuted. And he brought from the East to the West is one of the greatest treasures. He brought a great experiment - if it was heard. West could be a totally different world.

Problems facing today - what we have destroyed nature - would never have arisen. If Pythagoras became the basis of Western consciousness, would not have these great world wars. He could completely change the direction of history. He tried very hard, he did everything he could - it's not his fault. But people are blind, deaf people, they can not listen, they are not able to understand. And they are not willing to change their habits.

People are living their habits, they live mechanically. And he brought a message of awareness. The West could release huge meditative energy. Produce Adolf Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin would be impossible. It would be a totally different world. But still remain the same old habits.

We can not change human consciousness, until we begin to change the human body. When you eat meat, you absorb an animal - and the animal must be overcome. Avoid it! If you really want to go higher and higher if you really want to go to the sun peaks its consciousness, if you really want to know God, you have to change every possible way.

You will have to look at everything that surrounds your life, you have to consider in detail every little habit - because sometimes a very small change can change your life. Sometimes it can be quite Prostejov thing, and it can change your life so much so that it seems almost incredible.

Try to be a vegetarian, and you will be surprised: meditation becomes much easier. Love becomes thinner, loses its weight, density - become more sensitive, but less sensible to become more prayerful and less sexual. And your body will also start to vibrate differently. You will become more refined, softer, more feminine, less aggressive, more accepting.

Vegetarianism - is an alchemical change within you. It creates a space in which you can turn base metals into gold.

Second, that Pythagoras discovered the Western mind - the idea of ​​reincarnation. It too has some connection with vegetarianism. Again you will be surprised: all vegetarian religions believe in reincarnation, and all non-vegetarian religions believe in only one life. This can not be a coincidence.

In India, three great religions - Brahmanism, Jainism, Buddhism. They have all sorts of differences - their ideologies are so different that you will never find a more different ideologies. Hindus believe in God, they believe in the existence of the soul. Jains do not believe in God - this is extremely important - a religion without God. Buddhists do not even believe in the soul - there is no God, no soul. You can not imagine a religion without God and without a soul. These are the differences.

But of one thing they all agree, and that is - the idea of ​​reincarnation, rebirth. Even the Buddha, who does not recognize the soul, agrees. It looks very ridiculous - how can you be reborn, if there is no soul? He does not recognize a soul, but he believes in continuity. He says it's just as if you lit a candle at night - in the morning, when you extinguish it, if you can say that this is the same fire that you lit at night? It's not the same - and yet somewhere they are associated. Flame me all night, the flames disappeared overnight - it turned into smoke, and instead of him at every moment there is a new flame. In fact, the movement was so fast that you could not see the gaps. It was a continuous-constant change, but so rapid and profound - one flame is replaced by another, all night.

So when you put out the candle in the morning, it's not the same fire that you lit - although it seems the same. The first and the last flame connected - is part of the same chain, the same process - but you can not say that this is one flame, one soul.

That is the Buddhist idea of ​​reincarnation: the continuity continues, but personality disappear - not the individual soul. Yet the Buddha believed in reincarnation. Jains believe in reincarnation, Brahmins believe in reincarnation.

But the Jews, Christians and Muslims do not believe. These are the three great religions born outside India. How is it that all three Indian religions came across the fact of reincarnation? - Even though they do not agree in anything else. Why one they agree? They could not agree more. Where did it come to this experience? You will be surprised that the answer - it's vegetarian.

If a person is an absolute vegetarian, he can easily recall past lives. It is so pure that can look into your past lives. It does not have the density, the energy is not blocked, the energy moves easily. His stream of consciousness can penetrate in ancient times, and it can go back as far as he wants.

Consciousness is not a vegetarian blocked - in many ways. He accumulated a solid matter. This dense material acts as a barrier. That's why all three religions born outside India and the remaining non-vegetarian, could not come to the idea of ​​reincarnation. They could not try it out.

Pythagoras lived in India, deeply meditated realized past lives, could see myself in the past. He could not understand what the Buddha meant by saying, "Once I was a bishop, I once was a fish, I once was a tree."

The idea of ​​evolution has always existed in the East - and in a much more subtle form than it is presented by Darwin in Western science. Darwin's idea is very rude: he says that the monkey became a man - though Darwinists still not able to prove it, because they are still looking for a link between ape and man. And the problem arises: why only some people are monkeys? What happened to the other monkeys? A monkey mainly imitators - if some monkeys are people, then all the monkeys had to imitate them. What happened to the other monkeys? They are excellent mimics: why only some - people?

And there is still a monkey! Have been thousands and thousands of years, and monkeys - still a monkey. And you will not find a monkey, which unexpectedly became a man ... one morning she wakes up, and she - the person. No one has ever seen such a miracle happened. Here's the question: where is the link between ape and man? - And the difference is large, it is no small matter.

Just the other day someone asked, "John Lilly, said that the man - not the only creature on earth has consciousness, there are beings that are conscious man." He asked: "Is it true? Rights if John Lilly?"

However, these other animals have not revealed to man - it was John Lilly discovered these other animals. That person continues to open. Specifically, the one who reveals more conscience than to open. Even if once we find an animal with more developed brain, the discovery we do. This large brain simply could not find us.

There is a very developed animals, but no animals developed as a man. And the difference is great! John Lilly has worked with dolphins, and he thinks that dolphins are much more developed consciousness. If you ever meet John Lilly, tell him that there Dolphins opened it - he opened the dolphins. And the one who discovers a conscious, obviously.

Dolphins do not talk about yourself - that person is talking about dolphins. They can not even confirm anything about themselves. Dolphins - wonderful people, and Lilly on the right track, but the Dolphins do not have a more developed consciousness than man. Among them were born Buddha, Patanjali, Pythagoras - and even John Lilly.

The Western concept of evolution, the Darwinian concept of evolution, it is very heavy. Eastern view of the evolution of very thin. The issue is not that the body of a monkey becomes a human body - it never was, or the body of the fish is the human body - that never happens. But the inner being of fish continues to grow, it continues to change from one body to another.

Growth, evolution is not from body to body: the growth is in the mind. When a monkey gets a certain consciousness in the next birth she is a man, not a monkey. She will die and be born a monkey man. Evolution does not occur in the body of the ape. The body uses the soul - or whatever you call it, the continuity - the body of a monkey served, now the soul is ready for the best of the body, one in which more opportunities for growth.

The soul moves from one animal to another. The body does not evolve, evolving soul. The candle does not evolve, but the flame continues to go from one candle to another. The flames continued to climb higher and higher. Evolution - an evolution of consciousness, not the material, physical body. That's where Darwin completely wrong. But in the East, we realized that at least ten thousand years ago. This realization came through meditation, and this awareness was based on vegetarianism - because people began to remember their past lives. This was the main technique and the Buddha and Mahavira, when dedicating a new student, the first thing that was required of him and the Buddha and Mahavira - is to go into his past life. Have developed excellent methods to move past life.

And once you start moving past life as this life is completely transformed. Why? Because once you see that all those silly things you do now, or are about to do, you have been doing for many, many lives ... you did the same thing many times, and each time nothing achieved.

For example, if you're going crazy because of the money, and then I remember that in a past life, you are also going crazy because of the money, and you do well, and you have become rich, very rich, and then you die ... and all this wealth, all this abundance was useless. Death took him away, and you died as empty, as were as poor as they were. And you even remember what it was before this: you were king, you had a great kingdom. And yet you were disappointed, and yet you were unhappy, and you died in the accident. And again, you do the same thing and eager to have more money? This is impossible. Desire to simply return to dust. How can you keep repeating the same nonsense over and over again, if you can remember. You can repeat again and again the same stupid only if you can not remember. The idea of ​​reincarnation - a philosophical idea: it is an experience, it is completely scientific. People remember their lives.

When you enter a little deeper into meditation ... Here we continue to perform all of these techniques. But these techniques assume that you're an absolute vegetarian, otherwise you will not be able to go beyond this life. Your mind can not move - it should be as easy as a feather, so it can just go from one existence to another. And the easier it is, the deeper it penetrates.