The modern mind is much easier to understand this, because now we know that all life forms are interconnected and interdependent. The man - not an island: a man lives in an endless web of millions of forms of life and existence. We live in a chain, we are not separate. And to destroy the other animals are not only ugly, unaesthetic, inhuman - it is also unscientific. We are destroying our own foundation.
Life exists as an organic unity. A person can only exist as part of the orchestra. Just imagine a man with no birds, no animals and no fish - such a life would be very, very sad; it will lose the complexity, diversity, richness of color. Forest completely desolate, will not be heard the voice of the cuckoo, the bird will not fly, and the water will seem very sad without the fish.
And behind it there is something very scientific. Not by chance all the religions born in India, based on vegetarianism and all religions born outside India, do not contain vegetarianism. But the highest peaks of religious consciousness were known only in India and elsewhere.
Vegetarianism acts as a cleansing. When you eat animals, you need more than under the rule of law. You become heavy, you are more attracted to the ground. If you are a vegetarian, you are light, you no longer belong to the law of grace, the law of force, 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 begin to rise above the animals when you start doing for yourself is something that can not do any animal.
Vegetarianism - it's a conscious effort, a deliberate effort to get rid of gravity, which ties you to the ground, so you can fly - to make it possible to fly from a single to a single. The lighter the food, the deeper meditation. The denser the food, the more and the more difficult it becomes meditation. I'm not saying that non-vegetarian meditation is impossible - it is possible, but it is too difficult.
It's like a man who climbs the mountain and all the time brings a lot of stones. Perhaps even carrying the 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 ascent could become easier, more pleasant. A reasonable person does not incur the stones up the hill, not suffer anything unnecessary. And the higher it will climb, the easier and easier it will become. Even if he was carrying something, he will throw it. When Edmund Hidlari and Tenzing climbed Everest for the first time, they had to throw in the way of all - because the higher they climbed, the harder it was something to wear. They threw even the most essential. Be yourself more than enough.
Vegetarianism - it's a huge help. It changes your chemistry. When you eat, and live at the expense of animals ... The first is when an animal is killed, it is angry, afraid - naturally. When you kill an animal ... just imagine that kill you. What is your state of consciousness? What will happen to your psychology? In your body will direct all kinds of poisons, because when you are angry, your blood to a specific poison. When you are afraid, your blood poison comes back, another. And when you kill, it is the ultimate fear, anger. All the glands in your body release all their venom.
A person continues to live on that poisoned meat. Not surprisingly, if you stay angry, violent, aggressive; it is natural. If you live by the killing, you do not respect life; you are hostile to life. A person who is at war with life, can not go to prayer - because prayer is reverence for life.
And the one who is hostile to God's creatures may not be very friendly to God. If you destroy Picasso's paintings, you can not be very respectful towards Picasso - it is impossible. All creatures belong to God. God lives in them. God breathes into them - they are its manifestations, just like you. They are - brothers and sisters.
If you look at the animals, and you do not have an idea of 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 person continues to do everything.
Pythagoras first brought vegetarianism to the West. This is - deep wisdom for man: to learn how to live in peace with nature, in peace with creation. This becomes the foundation. Only on this foundation, you can set up his prayer, his meditative. You can watch 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 Kshatriya - belonged to the militant caste - but the experience of meditation gradually turn it into a vegetarian. It was his inner understanding, when he ate meat, meditation was more difficult; when he avoided meat, meditation was easier. It was a simple observation.
You will be surprised to know that the greatest vegetarians in the world were Jains - but all of them twenty-four masters were born in non-vegetarian families. All of them were warriors; they raised as fighters. All twenty-four Jain masters were Kshatriyas.
What happened? Why are these people who were brought up, taught from the beginning to eat meat, vegetarian created once the greatest 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 earth can not pull you down, so easy, that you start to levitate, so light that you open sky - then you should turn from dependence to non-vegetarian vegetarianism freedom.
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, conscious, intelligent, loving people can eat meat. And if he eats meat, then something is missing - he is still somewhere does not realize that he does not realize the significance of his actions.
But Pythagoras did not hear, did not believe him - on the contrary, it was ridiculed, persecuted. And he brought from the East to the West is one of the greatest treasures. He brought a great experiment - if you would have heard it. West could be a completely different world.
The problem, embarked today - that we have destroyed nature - would never have arisen. If Pythagoras became the basis for Western consciousness, there would be these great world wars. He could completely change the direction of history. He tried very hard, he did all he could - it was not his fault. But people are blind, deaf people; they can not listen, they are unable to understand. And they are not willing to change their habits.
People live their habits, they live mechanically. And he brought a message of awareness. In the West, could be released enormous meditative energy. Produce Adolf Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin would have been impossible. It would be a completely different world. But nevertheless retains all the same old habits.
We can not change human consciousness, until we begin to change the human body. When you eat meat, you have to absorb the animal - and you need to beat the animal. Avoid this! If you really want to go higher and higher, if you really want to go to the sunny heights of their consciousness if you really want to know God, you have to change in any way possible.
You have to look at everything that surrounds your life, you have to consider each small habit in detail - because sometimes it is very insignificant little thing can change your whole life. Sometimes it can be quite Prostejov thing, and it can change your life so that it seems almost unbelievable.
Try to be a vegetarian, and you will be surprised: meditation becomes much easier. Love will become thinner, lose their weight, density - become more sensitive but less sensuous, becomes more prayerful and less sexual. And your body will also begin to vibrate differently. You will become sleeker, softer, more feminine, less aggressive, more accepting.
Vegetarianism - it's an alchemical change in you. This creates a space in which the noble metals can be converted into gold.
The second thing that Pythagoras discovered the Western consciousness - is the idea of reincarnation. It also has some connection with vegetarianism. You will be surprised again all vegetarian religions believe in reincarnation, and all non-vegetarian religions believe in only one life. This may not be a coincidence.
In India, three great religions - Brahmanism, Jainism, Buddhism. They have all kinds of differences - their ideologies are so different that you will not find anywhere else will be able to 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 believe even in the soul - there is no God, no soul. You can not imagine a religion without God and without a soul. These are their differences.
But one thing they all agree, and this - the idea of reincarnation, rebirth. Even the Buddha, who does not recognize the soul, agrees. It looks very absurd - how can you be reborn, if there is no soul? He does not recognize the soul, but he believes in continuity. He says it's just as if you lit a candle in the evening - in the morning, when you extinguish it, if you can say that it is the same flame which you lit the night? It is not the same - and yet somewhere they are associated. Flame me all night, the flames disappeared overnight - it turns into smoke, and instead of it every moment there is a new flame. In fact, the movement was so fast that you could not see the gaps. It was nepreryvnost- constant change, but so fast and deep - one flame was replaced by another, the whole night.
So when you extinguish the candle in the morning, it is not the same flame which you lit - although it seems to be the same. The first and the last flames linked - it is part of a chain, one process - but you can not say that this is one flame, one soul.
This is the Buddhist idea of reincarnation: the continuity continues, but the personality disappear - the individual soul does not. 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 of India. How is it that all three Indian religions stumbled upon the fact of reincarnation? - Although they do not agree in anything else. Why do they agree in one? They could not agree more. From this experience I came to them? You will be surprised that the answer - it is a vegetarian.
If the person is an absolute vegetarian, he can easily recall past lives. It is so pure that it can look into their past lives. It does not have the density, its energy is not blocked, the energy moves easily. The flow of his consciousness can penetrate in ancient times; he can go back as far as he wants.
Consciousness is non-vegetarian blocked - in many ways. He has accumulated a solid matter. This solid matter acts as a barrier. That's why all three religions born outside of India, and the remaining non-vegetarian, could not come to the idea of reincarnation. They could not experience it.